In this much-anticipated third installment in the Stoic Virtues series, Ryan Holiday argues for the necessity of doing what’s right – even when it isn’t easy.
For the ancients, everything worth pursuing in life flowed from a strong sense of justice—or one’s commitment to doing the right thing, no matter how difficult. In order to be courageous, wise, and self-disciplined, one must begin with justice. The influence of the modern world often tells us that acting justly is optional. Holiday argues that that’s simply untrue—and the fact that so few people today have the strength to stand by their convictions explains much about why we’re so unhappy.
In Right Thing. Right Now., Holiday draws on fascinating stories of historical figures such as Marcus Aurelius, Florence Nightingale, Jimmy Carter, Gandhi, and Frederick Douglass, whose examples of kindness, honesty, integrity, and loyalty we can emulate as pillars of upright living. Through the lives of these role models, readers learn the transformational power of living by a moral code and, through the cautionary tales of unjust leaders, the consequences of an ill-formed conscience.
The Stoics never claimed that living justly was easy, only that it was necessary. And that the alternative—sacrificing our principles for something lesser—was considered only by cowards and fools. Right Thing. Right Now. is a powerful antidote to the moral failures of our modern age, and a manual for living virtuously.
akther
I read this book shortly after I got it and didn\’t just put it on my TBR shelf mainly because I saw it on Reese Witherspoon\’s bookclub September read. It was one of the best books I\’ve read this year, and reminded me some of Kristen Hannah\’s The Great Alone.