Right Thing, Right Now

By: Ryan Holiday

4 out of 5

This is Ryan Holiday’s 3rd entry in his 4-part Virtue Series: Discipline, Courage, Justice, Wisdom.

I think the title gets at the heart of the message really well. The term Justice has become a word concerning legality, bending the rules without breaking the rules. This book fights to remind us of the original intent of the word. Justice is more than what you can legally do, what you can get away with. It’s about what’s right, what’s the virtuous thing to do, what’s the admirable thing to do. In a world where subjectivity and egotism is central, it’s a challenge to live in an objectively honorable way and often at the expense of ourselves.

I think one of Holiday’s strengths is his ability to inspire you to think about what could be possible. I think all 4 tenets of Stoicism are universally admired (no one is going to say Justice is a bad thing), but life gets in the way of us living them out whether it’s traffic, bad service, busy schedules, etc. This book does a great job of slowing you down and realizing all the small opportunities we have to help make ourselves and the world better.

I will say, this book was my least favorite of the three so far. Still a good book (as my rating will attest), but much of Holiday’s writing is connecting inspirational events or admirable historical figures to his marquee virtue. In Disicipline is Destiny, it felt like ALLLLLLLL of his connections were interesting, informative, and inspiring. In Right Thing, I found some of his explanations and connections to be missing that final third. Where I used to have a “light-bulb” moment — sit back and ponder, I found myself asking, “And where does this story fit?”

I will also admit that this book seemed a little more politically charged than previous books, which isn’t really what I’m looking for in a philosophical book. Holiday does, rightfully, point out that Stoics were often active politicians in Greek/Roman government hoping to facilitate the virtues they held in reverence. He does do a nice job of using historical figures to inspire readers to look for “good trouble”, where the status quo is lacking in justice, but at other points, it seemed to veer away from right/wrong and more towards a more modern left/right.

While it wasn’t my favorite book of Ryan Holiday’s, his goal is to be a good steward of Stoicism (his words, not mine). While some of his connections and explanations I thought were a bit of a stretch, at the book’s core, I do strongly believe that he conveyed a message of justice, of right and wrong, that gets to the heart of Stoicism.