Discover how ancient Stoic wisdom from Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius empowers you to become truly immune to insults—without building walls or suppressing emotions. Embrace insult pacifism, self-deprecating humor, and inner tranquility for unbreakable resilience in a judgmental world.
When someone spat in Cato the Younger’s face during a public legal proceeding, the Roman statesman and Stoic philosopher simply wiped away the spittle and continued with his case. He later remarked to his adversary: “I will swear to anyone, Lentulus, that people are wrong to say that you cannot use your mouth.” The insult was turned back on the insulter through wit and dismissiveness, all without Cato showing any sign of being disturbed by the attack.
This response, preserved for more than two thousand years, captures something profound about how the Stoic philosophers approached insults. In “A Slap in the Face: Why Insults Hurt—And Why They Shouldn’t,” William B. Irvine explores why these ancient thinkers spent so much time developing strategies for dealing with insults, and why their approach remains startlingly relevant for modern life.
The Stoics weren’t trying to develop thicker skin or learn to suppress their emotions. They were after something more fundamental: freedom from the psychological machinery that makes insults hurt in the first place.
Why Philosophers Studied Insults
Irvine initially found it strange that philosophers like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius devoted significant attention to handling insults. Weren’t there more important philosophical questions to address? But he came to realize they were onto something essential. The Stoics understood that philosophy should teach us how to have a good life, and insults have the power to make us miserable.
More importantly, the Stoics recognized that insults were just a symptom of a deeper problem: our participation in what Irvine calls the social hierarchy game. Every insult that wounds you does so because you’re invested in maintaining your position relative to others. Every counter-insult you deliver is an attempt to restore that position. The entire exhausting cycle stems from playing a game you never consciously chose to enter.
The Stoic solution was radical: stop playing the game altogether. Not by withdrawing from society, but by ceasing to measure your worth by others’ opinions. This is what Irvine calls “insult pacifism,” and it’s more sophisticated than it might initially sound.
What Insult Pacifism Actually Means
Insult pacifism doesn’t mean pretending insults don’t exist or suppressing your natural emotional responses. It means refusing to treat insults as serious attacks that require defense or counterattack. When someone insults you, you carry on as if nothing of consequence happened.
Think about how you respond when a toddler calls you a “poopy head.” You don’t feel genuinely wounded. You don’t need to defend your honor or fire back with a devastating comeback. You recognize the “insult” as meaningless because you don’t grant the toddler authority over your self-worth. The Stoics suggested applying this same framework to insults from adults.
This doesn’t mean you become passive or allow yourself to be walked over. Irvine makes clear that insult pacifism is about your internal response, not about eliminating all external boundaries. You can still address inappropriate behavior in relationships or workplaces. You can still choose not to spend time with people who consistently treat you poorly. What changes is your emotional investment in their words.
The Strategy of Self-Deprecating Humor
One of the most effective Stoic techniques for defusing insults is self-deprecating humor. When someone tries to insult you, you respond by insulting yourself even more thoroughly than they did, and you do it with genuine amusement.
Irvine tested this approach in his own life and found it remarkably effective. When someone hits you with their best verbal shot and you respond by laughing and agreeing with an even harsher assessment of yourself, you’ve robbed them of their power. They wanted to wound you. Instead, you’ve turned their insult into entertainment. They look foolish for taking the shot, and you look confident and unshakeable.
This works because it’s psychologically difficult to remain upset about something you’re actively making jokes about. The self-deprecating humor isn’t a mask covering hurt feelings—it actually transforms your relationship to the criticism. You’re signaling to yourself and others that these particular words have no power over your sense of worth.
Consider Marc Connelly’s response when someone compared his bald head to the man’s wife’s backside. Rather than taking offense or firing back with a competing insult, Connelly felt his own head and said with appreciation, “So it does, so it does.” The original insulter was left with nowhere to go. The attack had been acknowledged, transformed into humor, and neutralized.
Why This Isn’t Passive
Some people worry that insult pacifism makes you a doormat, that refusing to fight back signals weakness and invites more abuse. Irvine found the opposite to be true. When you respond to insults not with counter-insults but with humor or indifference, you make the insulter look impotent. They threw their best punch and you barely noticed.
This actually discourages future insults more effectively than counter-attacking would. When you fire back with your own insult, you’ve confirmed that the game is being played, that words can wound you, that your status is something worth defending through verbal combat. You’ve given the insulter exactly what they wanted: evidence that they got to you.
But when you respond with amused self-deprecation or simple dismissiveness, you communicate something far more powerful: this person’s opinion of you is irrelevant. They don’t have the authority to determine your worth. Their words are just noise. Most people, faced with this response, will stop trying to insult you because there’s no payoff.
The Inner Work Behind the Outer Response
Insult pacifism isn’t a technique you can fake. If you try to act unbothered while secretly seething, you’ll come across as defensive and the insulter will recognize they’ve scored a hit. The Stoic approach requires genuine internal transformation.
This is where the deeper Stoic practices come in. They recommended daily reflection on what’s actually within your control (your own thoughts, choices, and responses) versus what isn’t (other people’s opinions and actions). They practiced negative visualization—imagining worst-case scenarios to reduce their emotional impact. They cultivated what they called “virtue”—living according to their values rather than seeking external validation.
Irvine emphasizes that these practices aren’t about becoming cold or emotionless. The Stoics weren’t trying to eliminate feelings; they were trying to eliminate the suffering caused by valuing the wrong things. When you genuinely don’t need others’ approval to feel worthwhile, insults lose their sting naturally. You’re not performing indifference; you’re actually indifferent.
The Social Hierarchy Game
Central to understanding Stoic insult pacifism is recognizing what Irvine calls the social hierarchy game. Humans, like many social animals, automatically sort themselves into hierarchies. We feel bad when our status drops and good when it rises. Insults hurt because they signal a loss of status. Counter-insults feel satisfying because they attempt to restore it.
The problem is that this game is unwinnable and playing it guarantees misery. There’s always someone above you, always threats to your position, always comparisons being made. You spend your life saying, doing, and buying things calculated to gain admiration from people who are too busy seeking admiration themselves to give you what you want.
The Stoics argued for opting out of this game entirely. Not by becoming hermits, but by recognizing that your worth doesn’t depend on your position in any hierarchy. You can interact with people, hold jobs, have relationships, and participate in society without constantly jockeying for status.
When you stop playing the hierarchy game, insults become irrelevant. They’re attempts to lower your position in a game you’re not playing. It’s like someone trying to capture your chess piece when you’re playing checkers—the move simply doesn’t apply.
Why This Works Better Than Fighting Back
Irvine contrasts insult pacifism with the common alternative: the witty comeback. There’s certainly appeal in delivering a devastating put-down that leaves your insulter speechless. Oscar Wilde was famous for this ability. But Irvine argues that even brilliant comebacks have serious limitations.
First, they require you to be exceptionally quick-witted in the moment. Most of us think of the perfect response hours later, a phenomenon the French call l’esprit de l’escalier—”staircase wit.” By the time you’ve crafted your brilliant riposte, the moment has passed.
Second, and more importantly, fighting back with insults legitimizes the entire exchange. It brings you down to the insulter’s level and elevates them to yours. It signals that you take them seriously enough to engage in verbal combat. It confirms that words can wound you and that your status is worth defending through escalating attacks.
The insulter gets what they wanted: your emotional engagement, proof that they matter enough to provoke a response, and an opportunity to continue the fight. Even if your comeback is cleverer than their original insult, you’ve lost something more valuable than you’ve gained.
When to Use the Witty Put-Down
Irvine doesn’t completely dismiss the witty comeback. He notes it has a place, but only among friends and only to add to the merriment. When you’re exchanging playful barbs with people you trust, clever insults strengthen rather than damage relationships. They signal comfort and intimacy. In this context, the witty response should always be followed by a token of reconciliation—a toast, a pat on the shoulder, a shared laugh—to confirm that no genuine offense was intended or taken.
But using this same approach with someone who’s genuinely trying to insult you is a mistake. Save your wit for play, not for war. The person attacking you doesn’t deserve your cleverest material, and engaging them on their terms gives them too much importance.
The Practice of Dismissiveness
Another Stoic technique is simple dismissiveness—treating the insulter as beneath your notice. This was Cato’s approach when he said “I don’t remember being struck” in response to someone apologizing for hitting him. The subtext was clear: you are so insignificant that I don’t even register your actions as worth remembering.
This requires genuine confidence. You can’t fake dismissiveness any more than you can fake insult pacifism. If you’re secretly bothered but pretending not to be, it shows. But when you genuinely view someone’s opinion as irrelevant, dismissiveness comes naturally.
Irvine notes that this works particularly well with strangers or people whose opinions you genuinely don’t value. The random troll on the internet, the road-raging driver, the rude customer at work—these people have no real claim on your attention or emotional energy. Recognizing this and responding accordingly protects your peace.
Why the Stoics Rejected Honors
The Stoics extended their principles beyond insults to encompass praise and honors as well. They were suspicious of awards, titles, and public recognition, seeing them as part of the same system that makes insults painful. If you need praise to feel worthwhile, you’ll be wounded by criticism. If you chase honors and status, you’ll suffer when you don’t receive them.
Irvine explains that this doesn’t mean the Stoics refused all recognition or lived in deliberate obscurity. Many held important positions in society. But they tried not to derive their self-worth from external validation, whether negative or positive. This internal independence is what allowed them to be genuinely indifferent to insults.
Perelman, the mathematician who solved one of the millennium problems and refused the Fields Medal and the million-dollar prize, exemplifies this Stoic attitude. His achievement was intrinsically meaningful to him; external recognition was irrelevant. Most people saw this as strange or even pathological. The Stoics would have seen it as philosophical sophistication.
The Challenge of Modern Application
Irvine is honest about the difficulty of applying Stoic principles in contemporary life. We’re bombarded with messages about the importance of self-esteem, reputation, and status. We’re encouraged to promote ourselves constantly on social media. The entire structure of modern career advancement depends on caring what others think of you.
How do you practice insult pacifism when your professional success depends on maintaining your reputation? How do you opt out of the hierarchy game when social standing determines access to opportunities? These are legitimate concerns that the ancient Stoics didn’t face in the same way.
Irvine suggests starting small. You don’t need to immediately achieve perfect indifference to all external opinions. Begin by noticing when you’re playing the status game. Recognize when an insult hurts because it threatens your position rather than because it contains truth worth considering. Practice responding to minor insults with humor or dismissiveness. Build the skill gradually.
The Transformation of Relationships
One of the most interesting discoveries Irvine reports from his own practice of insult pacifism is how it transformed his relationships. When you stop being defensive about criticism and stop jockeying for status in every interaction, your relationships become more genuine and relaxed.
People feel safer around you because you’re not constantly evaluating them or competing with them. You can be generous with praise because you’re not worried it will lower your relative position. You can accept criticism without defensiveness because your worth doesn’t depend on being perfect. Paradoxically, withdrawing from the social hierarchy game often improves your actual relationships, even if it might affect your status.
Beyond Technique to Philosophy
Ultimately, insult pacifism isn’t just a technique for handling difficult interactions. It’s the practical expression of a deeper philosophical stance about what matters in life. The Stoics believed that virtue—living according to your values, using your reason well, treating others with justice—was the only true good. Everything else—wealth, status, pleasure, and yes, others’ opinions of you—was neither good nor bad in itself.
This doesn’t mean these things have no value at all. The Stoics called them “preferred indifferents.” You can rationally prefer wealth to poverty, health to sickness, good reputation to bad reputation. But none of these things should be necessary for your sense of worth or your ability to live well.
When you internalize this perspective, insults become curious phenomena rather than genuine threats. Someone is using words to try to lower your social status, which you don’t actually care about. Someone is attacking a self-image you’re not invested in maintaining. Someone is playing a game you’ve chosen not to play.
The Path to Tranquility
The ultimate goal of Stoic practice, including insult pacifism, is tranquility—what the Greeks called ataraxia. This isn’t passive resignation or emotional numbing. It’s a state of active engagement with life combined with internal peace. You participate fully in relationships, work, and society, but you’re not disturbed by things outside your control, including others’ opinions.
Irvine makes clear that this tranquility doesn’t come easily or quickly. It requires sustained practice and philosophical work. You’ll stumble. You’ll get insulted and find yourself hurt or angry. You’ll defend yourself when dismissiveness would have served you better. This is normal. The practice is returning to your principles again and again, not achieving perfect consistency from day one.
But even partial progress makes a significant difference. When you respond to some insults with humor or indifference instead of pain or counter-attack, you’ve gained something valuable. When you recognize the social hierarchy game playing out and choose not to participate, even occasionally, you’ve created space for genuine peace.
The Modern Stoic
You don’t need to adopt all of Stoic philosophy to benefit from their insights about insults. You don’t need to reject all external goods or aim for perfect indifference to others’ opinions. But the core principle—that your worth doesn’t depend on others’ assessments of you, and that you can choose not to play the status games that make insults painful—remains powerfully relevant.
In a world of social media where everyone is constantly evaluated and ranked, where trolls can attack anonymously and criticism is instant and public, the Stoic approach offers genuine refuge. Not by hiding from criticism or building defensive walls, but by recognizing that these words only have the power you grant them.
The next time someone insults you, pause before responding. Ask yourself: Am I about to defend my position in a game I don’t actually want to play? Could I respond with humor instead of counter-attack? Could I simply dismiss this as irrelevant to my actual worth?
You might be surprised how liberating it feels to let the insult pass by like weather—noticed but not internalized, acknowledged but not answered. This is the Stoic path: not harder, but more free.