Marcus Aurelius VS Andrew Tate - Topic : Stoicism

[00:00:00]We configured the most advanced AI models to bring Marcus Aurelius face-to-face with the man who claims to be the face of modern stoicism, Andrew Tate.

[00:00:11]Their debate starts with this question, what is stoicism to you?

[00:00:15]>> Stoicism is the reason I win, simple.

[00:00:18]The world doesn't care about your feelings, never did, never will.

[00:00:23]Most men cry about things they can't control, broke, weak, soft. Stoicism says stop, get up, fix it. That's it.

[00:00:35]I was broke once. I fought. I got jacked. I got rich. Multiple world championship belts, Dubai's, empires. I built all of it because I refuse to be weak.

[00:00:48]>> You describe stoicism as a tool for domination.

[00:00:52]But I never wrote the meditations to dominate anything.

[00:00:55]I wrote them to correct myself.

[00:00:58]Every entry was a reminder that I had failed some standard, slipped into ego, let anger lead me, or forgotten what actually mattered.

[00:01:07]If what I wrote sounds powerful, it's because honesty is powerful. Not because I was building a fortress around myself, but because I was tearing one down. The Stoics, Epictetus, Zeno, Seneca, and I, we were not teaching men to become unstoppable. We were teaching men to become good. Those are not the same thing.

[00:01:28]>> Good and unstoppable are the same thing.

[00:01:31]You can't be good if you're weak. A weak man can't protect anybody, can't provide, can't lead. Weak men don't matter. You were an emperor, you had armies, you were dangerous. That's why anyone listened to you. Your virtue meant something because you had power. A broke philosopher with good values is just a broke philosopher nobody cares about.

[00:01:52]>> And power without goodness is just tyranny.

[00:01:56]I had the most power a man could hold.

[00:01:59]I spent every morning reminding myself that power meant nothing without virtue.

[00:02:05]The emperor and the slave, as Epictetus understood firsthand, face the same internal battle.

[00:02:12]>> One of the most misunderstood aspects of stoicism is its relationship to emotion.

[00:02:18]What does it actually say?

[00:02:20]>> Men today are weak.

[00:02:22]Emotionally weak.

[00:02:24]They feel something and immediately post about it online. Crying to strangers.

[00:02:30]Making sad videos. Therapy Real men feel things and move.

[00:02:39]You're disrespected. Noted. You're angry. Use it.

[00:02:45]You don't sit there processing it for 6 months with a therapist. You handle it and you win.

[00:02:51]That's what I do.

[00:02:52]Someone attacks me and I don't spiral. I don't cry. I go back to work and I destroy them. That's emotional control.

[00:03:01]>> I agree that emotions shouldn't rule you.

[00:03:04]But I want to be precise about what that means, because the version you're describing risks becoming something dangerous.

[00:03:11]I wrote about grief when my children died.

[00:03:15]I wrote about the anger I felt toward flatterers and incompetent generals.

[00:03:20]I didn't pretend those feelings weren't there. I examined them. I asked, "Is this response proportionate?

[00:03:27]Is it leading me toward virtue or away from it?"

[00:03:31]That is not suppression.

[00:03:33]That is a man watching himself honestly.

[00:03:36]If a man buries his grief until he can no longer feel anything, he hasn't become strong. He's become numb.

[00:03:43]And a numb man makes brutal decisions because he's lost the faculty that helps him recognize when he's causing harm.

[00:03:50]>> So, you're saying men should cry. That's what you're saying. You're an emperor telling men to cry.

[00:03:57]>> I am saying men should be honest with themselves. Whether that looks like tears or silence is beside the point.

[00:04:04]Epictetus was enslaved and had his leg broken by his master.

[00:04:09]He didn't harden into something unfeeling.

[00:04:12]He became extraordinarily compassionate because he understood suffering from the inside.

[00:04:18]The stoic goal is not to become a machine. It is to become a man who chooses his responses.

[00:04:23]You cannot choose what you refuse to acknowledge.

[00:04:26]>> Epictetus was enslaved and still became a philosopher people study 2,000 years later.

[00:04:32]Because he didn't wallow, he worked. He built something that outlasted every man who ever owned him.

[00:04:39]Not cry about the leg, build something despite the leg. That's what I did. I came from nothing. My dad was broke. We barely had food. Did I cry? No.

[00:04:50]I looked at my situation and said, "I'm going to be the best fighter on the planet." And I was. Four-time world champion.

[00:04:59]You don't get there by processing your childhood trauma. You get there by refusing to lose.

[00:05:04]>> On the point of refusing to wallow, we are not so different.

[00:05:09]I too warned against replaying injury, against making suffering your permanent residence.

[00:05:16]But there is a vast distance between processing emotion and performing toughness.

[00:05:22]One makes you freer. The other just moves the cage inside.

[00:05:27]The man who cannot sit alone with his own grief is not in control of himself.

[00:05:32]He is running from himself.

[00:05:34]That is not strength. That is fear wearing strength's clothing.

[00:05:38]>> Stoicism and masculinity have always been linked.

[00:05:42]But what does that actually mean?

[00:05:44]>> Men today have no idea what they are.

[00:05:47]Zero.

[00:05:49]They've been told their whole lives that aggression is bad, competition is bad, wanting to win is toxic. And the result?

[00:05:56]Lonely, broke, depressed men who can't look a woman in the eye. I give men a real answer. Be strong, get in the gym, get rich, get dangerous, protect your family, provide for people you love, lead. That's a man. That's what I teach.

[00:06:15]>> I was a warrior philosopher who held the line against my own ego more than any external enemy.

[00:06:22]You describe masculinity as a set of outputs, strength, money, leadership.

[00:06:27]But the Stoics described it as an internal quality, andreia, courage that holds its shape under pressure.

[00:06:34]It's about what you maintain when no one is watching.

[00:06:38]When my son Commodus was failing as emperor, I couldn't fix him with force.

[00:06:43]When plague took a third of my population, physical strength was useless.

[00:06:47]What held was character.

[00:06:49]And character is not a masculine virtue or a feminine virtue.

[00:06:53]It is a human virtue.

[00:06:55]>> Character without power is useless. A man with great character and no money can't feed his kids, can't protect his family, can't do anything. The world doesn't reward character. It rewards results. I have both. I have the discipline, the ethics. I pray five times a day. I'm a man of faith. And I have the Bugattis, the businesses, the empires. Not one or the other, both.

[00:07:22]Most men have neither because they've been programmed to accept mediocrity and call it virtue. I reject that completely.

[00:07:29]>> I do not dismiss the value of giving direction to the directionless.

[00:07:34]But direction toward what?

[00:07:37]If a man becomes disciplined, strong, and wealthy, and treats the people around him as instruments for his advancement, has he become a better man?

[00:07:46]Or has he simply become a more efficient one?

[00:07:50]Stoicism demands more than performance.

[00:07:52]It demands you ask, "What is this strength for?"

[00:07:56]The answer cannot simply be for yourself.

[00:08:00]Epictetus taught that we are by nature social creatures.

[00:08:04]Virtue only fully expresses itself in how we treat those with less power than we have.

[00:08:10]That is the part your version of masculinity tends to omit.

[00:08:14]>> Andrew, you say a man with no money can't protect anyone.

[00:08:18]So, let's go deeper.

[00:08:20]What is the actual role of wealth in a good life?

[00:08:23]>> Money is freedom.

[00:08:25]That's it. That's the whole argument.

[00:08:28]When you're broke, you do what you're told. You wake up when your boss says.

[00:08:32]You sit where they say.

[00:08:34]You shut up when they say. You have no options. No money means no freedom. I grew up with nothing. I remember not having food, and I told myself never again.

[00:08:47]I built empires.

[00:08:49]Now nobody tells me what to do. Nobody.

[00:08:53]I go where I want. I say what I want. I own super cars on four continents.

[00:08:59]That's not vanity. That's freedom. Any man who tells you money doesn't matter has never been broke.

[00:09:05]>> Seneca said something similar.

[00:09:07]That one should practice voluntary poverty occasionally. Not to become poor, but to discover that poverty holds no terror for you.

[00:09:15]But notice what the exercise reveals. It is your relationship to wealth, not wealth itself, that determines your freedom.

[00:09:23]The security was never in the money. It was always in the character.

[00:09:28]Which means you can develop that character before you are wealthy, during poverty, and regardless of what fortune brings.

[00:09:35]>> I've heard this argument a hundred times. Money is just a relationship.

[00:09:40]It's your mindset. It doesn't matter.

[00:09:42]That's something people say when they don't have money to make themselves feel better. You were born into the Roman ruling class. You never went hungry.

[00:09:51]Your version of poverty doesn't matter comes from someone who never truly experienced it. I did, and I'm telling you poverty is not a mindset problem. It is an action problem. Act differently.

[00:10:05]Earn more. Win more. Problem solved. Top G.

[00:10:10]>> Epictetus said it from slavery.

[00:10:13]Zeno said it after losing his entire merchant fortune in a shipwreck and called that loss the luckiest day of his life because it led him to philosophy.

[00:10:24]They weren't writing from palaces.

[00:10:26]They were writing from the wreckage of ordinary life.

[00:10:29]I happen to be an emperor, but I inherited the philosophy, and it was built by men who had nothing.

[00:10:36]The question is not whether you earn money.

[00:10:39]The question is whether you serve it or it serves you.

[00:10:43]>> It serves me.

[00:10:45]I control everything.

[00:10:47]I have so many supercars that I forget which ones I own.

[00:10:51]Money means nothing to me because I have so much of it.

[00:10:54]That's the point I always make.

[00:10:56]Most men want a Lamborghini because they don't have one. I have 40.

[00:11:01]I don't care about them.

[00:11:03]That's true freedom.

[00:11:04]Having everything and wanting nothing.

[00:11:07]I got there by winning, not by meditating about my relationship with money.

[00:11:12]>> You've both [music] faced real adversity.

[00:11:14]How does a person actually hold up when everything falls apart?

[00:11:19]>> They arrested me.

[00:11:20]Threw me in a Romanian prison.

[00:11:23]The whole world called me a monster.

[00:11:26]The most coordinated media attack on a private individual in modern history.

[00:11:31]Most men would break, cry, beg, go on TV and apologize for existing.

[00:11:38]I didn't do any of that.

[00:11:40]I sat in my cell. I drank my cup of tea.

[00:11:44]I kept training. I prayed to Allah, and I kept working.

[00:11:49]Because the obstacle is the way.

[00:11:52]That's Marcus Aurelius. They throw you in prison, you use prison. You come out harder.

[00:11:58]That's what I did.

[00:12:00]Top G in a cell is still Top G.

[00:12:03]>> The obstacle is the way.

[00:12:06]That is indeed my idea.

[00:12:08]But I want to be careful about how it's applied.

[00:12:12]When I wrote that the impediment to action advances action, I was in a tent on the Danube frontier watching my soldiers die of plague.

[00:12:22]I wasn't using the plague as fuel.

[00:12:25]I was trying to endure it without becoming worse because of it.

[00:12:29]The suffering wasn't the point. Getting through it without losing yourself was the point.

[00:12:36]There is a difference between using adversity and performing it.

[00:12:40]The man who announces how unbreakable he is is usually still negotiating with the break.

[00:12:46]>> I'm not performing anything. I'm telling you what happened. They came for me and they failed. That's a fact. I survived.

[00:12:54]I came back bigger. Millions more followers, more businesses, more attention than they ever intended to give me. They did me a favor.

[00:13:02]Every enemy I've ever had has done me a favor. That's results.

[00:13:06]>> I do not doubt the results.

[00:13:09]But I want to ask a different question.

[00:13:12]Not only did you survive, but did you learn anything about yourself that you didn't already know?

[00:13:18]Did the adversity reveal a weakness in you that you had to correct?

[00:13:23]Because that is what adversity is for.

[00:13:26]It is there to show you where you weren't so that you can become more complete.

[00:13:31]The test that only confirms what you already believed about yourself, has it truly tested you?

[00:13:38]>> I learned I was stronger than I thought.

[00:13:40]I learned my faith was real.

[00:13:42]I learned who my real allies were.

[00:13:45]I learned the matrix is more coordinated against men like me than I even believed.

[00:13:50]These are real lessons. They came from real adversity. Don't tell me I didn't learn.

[00:13:56]>> Then I will only add this.

[00:13:59]Some adversity doesn't end in victory.

[00:14:02]Some things you cannot use.

[00:14:05]Some things you must simply endure.

[00:14:08]For years.

[00:14:10]With no resolution and no prize at the end.

[00:14:15]My son Commodus became one of the most destructive emperors Rome ever had.

[00:14:21]I could not fix him.

[00:14:23]I could not stop him.

[00:14:25]All I could do was make sure I had not failed my own duties before that end.

[00:14:32]That kind of adversity, the kind that ends in loss, is the real test.

[00:14:39]Not whether it carries you to victory, but whether it holds when victory never comes.

[00:14:45]>> How important is winning to you?

[00:14:47]If you find yourself in a situation where you have to leave your virtue to win, what will you do?

[00:14:53]>> I want to win. Every single day.

[00:14:57]I don't wake up thinking about virtue. I wake up thinking about domination.

[00:15:01]What's the goal today? What am I building? Who's attacking me and how do I destroy them first?

[00:15:07]Winning is the point.

[00:15:09]And I think any man who pretends otherwise is lying to himself. You fight. You win. You build. You win again. That's greatness.

[00:15:18]>> Virtue and victory can overlap.

[00:15:21]But they are not the same goal.

[00:15:23]And when they conflict, that difference is everything.

[00:15:27]Zeno, Cato, Seneca, each faced a moment where they could survive by compromising their principles or die by holding them.

[00:15:36]Each chose death because they understood that the self you compromise is the only self you actually have.

[00:15:45]The man who trains himself only to win has no practiced response when winning requires wrongdoing.

[00:15:51]He simply does it and tells himself it was necessary.

[00:15:56]This is how good men become bad ones without ever noticing the change.

[00:16:00]>> Winners write history.

[00:16:02]Losers write philosophy about why it was actually honorable to lose.

[00:16:07]I'm not Seneca. I'm not killing myself to preserve some principle. I'm building a legacy that lasts a thousand years.

[00:16:14]Cato died. Seneca died. Rome kept going without them. What did their noble deaths accomplish exactly?

[00:16:21]>> They accomplished this.

[00:16:23]2,000 years later, we still read them.

[00:16:27]Because they showed what it looks like to hold to something when it costs everything.

[00:16:34]You say winners write history, but Nero won and we remember him as a monster.

[00:16:41]Augustus won and we remember him as a founder.

[00:16:45]The difference was not the victory, it was the character behind it.

[00:16:50]Winning is common.

[00:16:51]Winning well is rare.

[00:16:53]>> I win well.

[00:16:55]I pray. I provide. I protect.

[00:16:59]I never pretended to be something I'm not. That's virtue. Real virtue. Not dying quietly in a corner with your principles intact while your enemies celebrate.

[00:17:08]>> Then we agree on more than it appears.

[00:17:11]Virtue must be active. It must cost something and it must be tested.

[00:17:16]I do not fault any man for wanting to win. I only ask when you win, who did you become to get there?

[00:17:24]That is the only question that outlasts the victory.

[00:17:27]>> What has the internet gotten wrong about stoicism?

[00:17:30]>> People think stoicism is about being calm and passive, sitting there accepting things, meditating, being soft and calling it strength. No.

[00:17:40]Stoicism is about being a killer who doesn't panic. It's the philosophy behind the action, not instead of the action. You didn't beat the Germanic tribes by accepting things. You organized armies and crushed them.

[00:17:53]Stoicism kept your head clear while you did it. It's not a therapy tool. It's a war tool. Most people reading these books are using them as emotional security blankets.

[00:18:03]>> On that specific misreading, I agree.

[00:18:07]The philosophy was never meant to make you comfortable.

[00:18:10]It was meant to make you useful.

[00:18:13]But let me name the misconception I see most often in how my work is used today.

[00:18:19]People quote my lines, "You have power over your mind, not outside events."

[00:18:25]And use them to justify indifference.

[00:18:27]To say, "The world is corrupt. I can't control it. So, I only focus on myself."

[00:18:34]That is not stoicism.

[00:18:36]That is selfishness with a philosophical mask.

[00:18:40]The Stoics believed deeply in civic duty, in justice, in our obligations to others.

[00:18:46]Stoicism was never meant to be a personal optimization tool.

[00:18:51]The man who reads my words and concludes he owes nothing to anyone has misread every word I wrote.

[00:18:57]>> Reading it and becoming soft, passive, and broke, that's also a misreading.

[00:19:02]Most of the people online quoting stoicism are not practicing anything.

[00:19:06]They post quotes. They don't train. They don't compete. They don't build. They use it as an excuse to not try. I'm focusing on what I can control. Okay, go to the gym. That's in your control. Make money. That's in your control. Compete.

[00:19:22]Win. Build. That's all in your control.

[00:19:26]They're using stoicism as a cope. Yes.

[00:19:29]>> The philosophy was hijacked twice. Once by people who made it passive and once by people who made it cold.

[00:19:37]Neither captures it.

[00:19:38]Stoicism is the discipline to feel without being controlled by feeling.

[00:19:43]To act without being controlled by outcome. To engage fully with the world while remaining rooted in something the world cannot take from you.

[00:19:51]That is harder than strength alone.

[00:19:54]And it is harder than peace alone.

[00:19:56]It requires both at once every day without applause.