#23 Nancy Sherman | Stoic Wisdom and the Soul of Moral Life
TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY
(This transcript summary was AI-generated and then edited by the podcast hosts for quality assurance)
#23 Nancy Sherman | Living Well: Aristotelic and Stoic Wisdom
- a podcast dialogue with Michael Noah Weiss and Guro Hansen Helskog
INTRODUCTION
In this episode, philosopher Nancy Sherman, Distinguished University Professor at Georgetown University and former Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy, joins Michael Noah Weiss and Guro Hansen Helskog for a wide-ranging conversation about ancient ethics and modern moral psychology. Drawing from Aristotle and the Stoics, Sherman explores what it means to live well, to cultivate resilience without denial, and to nurture our social and emotional capacities in a fragmented world. Her reflections bridge classical virtue ethics, psychoanalysis, and contemporary questions about education, responsibility, and mental health.
WHAT MAKES US HUMAN: ARISTOTLE, THE SOUL, AND SOCIAL CONNECTION
Sherman begins by describing her lifelong fascination with the question of what makes us human. Her philosophical path began with Aristotle, whom she calls her “best intellectual friend.” Through Aristotle’s lens, she developed a lifelong interest in the emotions, the moral psyche, and the formation of character.
Her forthcoming book, How to Have a Soul: What Aristotle Teaches Us About Lasting Happiness, reinterprets Aristotle’s concept of psyche not as an immortal entity but as the functional center of human life—the dynamic integration of reason, desire, and perception. The “soul” is thus our capacity for living well, feeling rightly, and being socially and politically embedded.
Aristotle’s vision of self-sufficiency, Sherman emphasizes, is relational, not individualistic. Flourishing requires others—family, friends, and community. In a time when digital interactions increasingly replace genuine connection, Sherman finds Aristotle’s warning against “watery friendships” strikingly relevant. Social media may multiply contacts but erode depth and authenticity, leaving many students anxious and lonely.
STOICISM REVISITED: BETWEEN STRENGTH AND VULNERABILITY
Sherman’s second major focus is Stoicism, a philosophy she has engaged both as a scholar and through her work with the U.S. military. Her book Stoic Wisdom: Ancient Lessons for Modern Resilience sought to correct modern distortions of Stoicism—especially those that equate it with emotional suppression or self-reliant toughness.
The original Stoics, she argues, were more nuanced: they sought inner freedom through understanding one’s emotions rather than repressing them. Seneca’s letters, for instance, combine mentoring, moral psychology, and reflections on anger, gratitude, and mercy. Yet Stoicism’s insistence that external events cannot truly harm us can also foster emotional rigidity and guilt. Aristotle, by contrast, acknowledges the tragic dimensions of life—the blows of fortune, grief, and loss that no self-control can fully deflect.
Sherman distinguishes her reading of Stoicism from the self-help industry’s “Western Zen” version, popularized in Silicon Valley. Modern Stoic influencers celebrate productivity, tranquility, and emotional control but often neglect the social and moral context of the ancient philosophy. Stoic “pre-rehearsal” exercises—imagining future hardships to prepare for them—can help build resilience, yet also risk “pre-traumatizing” the self. Real Stoic meditation, she notes, was discursive and self-critical, more like nightly moral accounting than serene mindfulness.
For Sherman, resilience is not detachment but connection—the capacity to sustain emotional depth without being undone by it.
STOICISM, SPIRITUALITY, AND SELF-FORMATION
Although Stoicism is often seen as rational and secular, Sherman recognizes a spiritual dimension in its reflective practices. Yet unlike Eastern meditation, which aims to empty the mind, Stoic meditation involves self-dialogue, scrutiny, and correction. It is more about self-improvement than transcendence—a moral rather than mystical practice.
Asked how this relates to the European Bildung tradition, Sherman traces a line from Stoic emotional regulation to character formation in Kant and Hegel. Both Stoics and Kantians, she explains, seek to transform the emotions through understanding: to identify what one feels, why, and how one acts in response. Kant’s later works, such as the Doctrine of Virtue, soften his earlier rigidity, allowing for the cultivation of sympathy as part of moral growth. Aristotle, too, sees virtue as a harmony of judgment, feeling, and action. Hegel, Sherman adds, extends this to the social and historical level: self-formation unfolds within the movement of collective spirit (Geist), shaped by political and cultural transformations.
Sherman thus situates moral development between self-scrutiny and social embeddedness, echoing her broader view that ethical life is both inwardly and outwardly cultivated.
RESPONSIVENESS, RESPONSIBILITY, AND ETHICAL CONDUCT
Connecting to the podcast’s title ResponsAbility, Sherman reflects on what it means to “respond rather than react.” In Stoic terms, the wise person—the sophos—responds with composure and judgment rather than impulsivity. Yet Sherman cautions that the Stoic ideal can overemphasize individual control. By contrast, Aristotle acknowledges contingency and vulnerability: tragedy, loss, and political misfortune can strike anyone. ResponsAbility, then, should not collapse into self-blame but must account for circumstance and social context.
Applied to professional and educational life, Sherman highlights emotional expression as part of ethical action. Drawing from Seneca and Cicero, she notes that how we act includes how we carry ourselves—our gestures, tone, and embodied presence. Leadership, collegiality, and institutional life all depend on aligning emotion and action. In contemporary workplaces, much of this nuance is lost through digital communication. Ethical conduct, she suggests, involves regaining attentiveness to our expressive and relational dimensions.
RESILIENCE, MENTAL HEALTH, AND THE LIMITS OF PHILOSOPHY
In the final part of the conversation, Sherman addresses the growing mental health crisis among students and young people. Many, she observes, long for calm and resilience but suffer from isolation, distraction, and social-media dependency. While Stoic ideas can offer perspective and comfort—particularly in extreme circumstances like war or imprisonment—they are no substitute for professional mental health care.
She recalls that figures such as Admiral Stockdale, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, drew strength from Epictetus’s teachings on control and endurance. Yet for everyday struggles with loneliness, addiction, and anxiety, philosophical handbooks can become hollow forms of “sturdiness.” What students need, Sherman insists, is genuine connection, institutional support, and mindful engagement with others—not self-sufficiency masquerading as strength.
CONCLUSION
The conversation with Nancy Sherman illuminates the ethical depth of the ancient tradition she carries forward: an ethics that binds inner life and social life, reason and emotion, self and world. Against both the isolating individualism of modern Stoicism and the superficiality of digital culture, Sherman reclaims the classical insight that to have a good soul is to be well-related—to others, to one’s community, and to oneself.
Her synthesis of Aristotle’s philia and Stoic resilience, enriched by psychoanalytic insight, offers a timely reminder that responsibility begins in responsiveness: in the capacity to stay open, thoughtful, and emotionally attuned to what life—and others—demand of us.
