Language shapes philosophy: the case of Broicism

why Stoicism is misunderstood

Photo by Fons Heijnsbroek on Unsplash

I love tracing cultural and behavioural differences back to philosophy, and I’ve always wondered why English-speaking people have trouble understanding the Stoic philosophy. Why Stoicism became Broicism in the United States? For those unfamiliar with the term, Broicism is a modern and shallow interpretation of Stoicism that focuses on suppressing emotions to appear tough when dealing with challenges.

And you may suggest, it’s all marketing tactic with the goal of targeting insecure men who are into self-help. But I had many conversations with people having no economic interests, and they just had difficulty understanding the nuances of the philosophy.

And to me, this difficulty is obviously not of intellectual nature, but I trace it back to the language.

As an Italian, I have always found English to be the supreme language for expressing complex technical concepts. I love the fact that I can just put words together and create compact, solid-feeling units like “mind-blowing,” “world-building,” “soul-crushing”. The ease with which these concepts can be created makes them concrete, visual, and immediate. It’s like those concepts now exist, and materialize in front of you. When you name something, you actually have power over something.

This concept objectification is called the reification process. English excels in this, but Italian resists this packaging.

However, when I try to write or talk about something abstract, that doesn’t have edges or agency or gender, English almost forces me to betray it. You have to dress it up as a character or an object to make it sayable.

Italian has these beautiful escape hatches from personhood:

“Mi viene da piangere” means “crying comes to me”; I’m not doing it.

The reflexive: “Si pensa, si sente” means thinking happens, feeling happens, but who’s doing it? The grammar doesn’t care.

You can describe entire experiences without assigning agency. English demands agency. Even in passive voice (”I was overcome by emotion”), there’s still an I being acted upon, and you can’t escape the personhood.

Let’s play with an example. I can have an entire sentence like this one:

“Si pensa mentre la vita scorre, ma poi si prende coscienza e ci si chiede ‘a cosa si stava pensando nell’ultimo momento’? Ma poi si prova a tornare indietro, e sembra impossibile che l’ultimo pensiero si sia già dimenticato.”

Now, if I try to translate literally THAT into English, this is the result:

“Thinks while life flows, but then consciousness is taken and to-itself is asked ‘what was being thought in the last moment?’ But then tries to trace back and seems impossible that the last thought has already forgotten itself.“

Sounds like Yoda speaking. Here, “Ci si chiede” means one asks to oneself/among ourselves. The expression is impersonal and has a reflexive/collective dimension meaning. English has no such equivalent. The closest natural translation would be:

“Thinking while life flows, but then awareness dawns and the question arises: ‘what was I just thinking?’ But trying to trace back, it seems impossible that the last thought has already been forgotten.”

But here, still, I awareness is a subject that does something, I nominalized “asking” into “question” as object, and slipped an “I” into the quoted question because English dialogue demands it.

Even in everyday life, the way we greet in Italy is usually something similar:

“Ciao, come va?” “Si va avanti.”

Literal English attempt: “Hi, how goes?” “Going-forward happens”.

Natural English: “Hi, how’s it going?” “Keeping on / getting by / pushing through.”

Despite being very common “Si va avanti” is philosophically profound. It says: Going-forward is happening, I’m caught up in it, we’re all caught up in it, it’s not really anyone’s choice, but here we are, in the forward-going.

It’s stoic, processual, existential without being dramatic.

Italian grammar allows for experiences without experiencers and processes without agents. This aligns with certain philosophical traditions, such as Buddhist non-self, process philosophy, and phenomenology, that seek to describe experience before the subject-object split.

English’s grammar enforces subject-object dualism. You can’t escape it without sounding awkward or poetic. This aligns with Anglo-American analytic philosophy’s obsession with agents, actions, and objects.

That’s why there is such a huge difference in the Stoic philosophy interpretation. In Italy, we understand that thinking and emotions just happen to us. Thinking happens, feelings arises. We can, however, decide whether to act or react on them.

But the broicism, because life doesn’t happen, thinking doesn’t happen, you are the one thinking, so you have control over the thinking, has become more like suppressing emotions and having agency.

Here are two versions of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I’m taking a passage from Book 4, Section 3, one in English and one in Italian.

In English, Marcus tells you to “remember your retreat into this little domain which is yourself.” The word retreat becomes a noun, a thing you possess. You HAVE a retreat. But in Italian it’s “puoi ritirarti”, you can withdraw-yourself. It’s a reflexive infinitive. The action folds back on itself. You’re not going somewhere, you’re enacting a reflexive movement.

Then look at what comes next. English says “be not disturbed nor on the rack”. You’re in a passive position now, disturbed BY something, tortured by an external device. The Italian says “non agitarti e non darti troppa pena,” which translates to don’t agitate yourself, don’t give yourself too much pain. Both verbs are reflexive. You’re not a victim of external disturbance, you’re the one doing the agitating to yourself.

Take the disturbance line “disturbances come only from the judgement within.” Disturbances are the subjects doing the action of coming. The Italian says “I turbamenti vengono soltanto dall’opinione che si forma all’interno”. Here, the opinion forms itself. “Si forma” it’s reflexive again. The judgment here it’s self-forming, arising through its own process.

And then the transformation line. English says, “all that your eyes behold will change in a moment and be no more.” Things will change, and that’s it. Italian says, “tutto quanto vedi, tra un istante si trasformerà e non sarà più” translates into everything that you see will transform itself. The reflexive again. Change is enacted by the things themselves, it’s part of their nature, not an external force acting on them.

The traduction creates completely different philosophies. The English version gives you a YOU that retreats somewhere, a YOU that must not be disturbed, like you’re under attack, disturbances that come at you like invaders, and things that will change as if change is done to them. You’re either the protagonist or the victim being acted upon.

The Stoic practice that Marcus is actually describing becomes clear in Italian. You don’t “go” somewhere when you retreat; you fold into yourself. You’re not attacked by disturbances, you create them through the movement of self-agitation. Opinions arise (si formano), they’re not things you build or things that assault you. Transformation happens through things themselves because it’s their nature to unfold.

But English grammar tells YOU must retreat, which sounds like active effort, like you’re running away to a safe space. YOU must not BE disturbed, which sounds like you’re resisting external forces. YOU must control your judgments, which sounds like you’re the boss of your mind. YOU must prepare for change, which sounds like you’re defending against it, bracing for impact.

This is the broicism I’m talking about. The English translation makes Marcus Aurelius sound like he’s telling you to be a warrior fighting off emotions, when the Greek middle voice and the Italian reflexive show he’s describing a process of letting things happen while remaining in a reflexive, self-aware space that doesn’t require you to be either conqueror or victim.

It seems like nothing, but it’s the entire difference between understanding Stoicism as a practice of aligning with process versus misunderstanding it as a practice of control and suppression.

Of course, many english speaking people understand stoicism, but they are doing in my opinion way more cognitive job because of language difference.

This is why Italians who read Marcus Aurelius are, generally speaking, very chill. And this is why stoicism turned into self-help hustle culture about being mentally tough and not letting anything affect you.

The grammar is doing the philosophy before you even get to the concepts.

Farewell,

Giulia.

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