05/02/2026
Bar Banter will have Dr Russell McNeil joining us on May 21st, who will share more on Stoic Principles.
Get Tickets in our Bio or go to Eventbrite and search for Bar Banter!
Join us for some Liquid Learning!
There is a certain kind of person who has never been tested, and yet call themselves strong. They have never known temptation, and yet they call themselves disciplined. They have never known real hardship, and yet they call themselves resilient. In 1644, the poet John Milton had a phrase for this behaviour. He called it a ‘fugitive and cloistered virtue’, and he thought it was worthless.
Milton argued that the virtue that has never been challenged cannot be called a virtue. I can call myself whatever I want. I can say I am brave, hardworking, kind, resilient, or whatever, but unless I do those things, they are just empty words. They are boasts of the untested.
The stoic, Marcus Aurelius, once wrote that we should waste no time in debating what a good person is. We should simply be one. He wrote his Meditations in private. They were never intended for publication, because Aurelius thought that virtue was a practice, not an academic lecture. The most powerful man in the Roman Empire held himself accountable in a diary that no one was supposed to read.
For Milton and Aurelius, a good person is defined by doing good things. They do not talk about it, and they do not even celebrate it. They do not shy away from the world or run away from a moral test. They stand their ground, and they win. A virtue that has never been tested cannot be called a virtue.
