The Fake Stoicism of Ryan Holiday’s Self-Help Advice
And why his books nevertheless dominate the bookstore’s philosophy section
At least in Canada where I live, the philosophy section of mainstream bookstores is relatively paltry, which is depressing but understandable. Only what sells can sit on the bookstore’s shelves. And philosophy doesn’t sell well, especially when in competition with the rankest sophistry of the flourishing self-help genre.
Indeed, self-help authors parasitize philosophy, as I confirmed in a bookstore when I noticed that by far the biggest selling author in the philosophy section is Ryan Holiday, the marketer and so-called Stoicism expert who allegedly turns that ancient philosophy’s principles into self-help fodder for consumers.
Notice below in the picture I took of half the philosophy shelves (located at the disadvantageous bottom of the rack) how Holiday has a whopping six titles that are being stocked, whereas the other authors have no more than one or two. He’s like the Stephen King of philosophy.
Except that when you read Holiday, you discover he’s no philosopher at all but just a self-help writer. That’s equivalent to saying he’s a propagandist for neoliberal ideology; a panderer to fragile, infantilized consumers; and a charlatan who twists the facts…
