Born in Lafayette, Indiana, William O. Stephens was raised in West Lafayette, the second son of Purdue University professors. At West Lafayette Senior High School he earned varsity letters in tennis and began learning about ancient civilizations and Latin with an inspiring teacher named Oliver S. Oesch. After two years at the College of Wooster in Ohio studying philosophy with James Coke Haden and Latin with Joe and Leslie P. Day, Stephens transferred to Earlham, a Quaker college in Richmond, Indiana. At Earlham he studied philosophy with Robert Horn and Peter Suber, Greek and Latin with Steve Heiny and Liffey Thorpe, and played varsity tennis (doubles). After receiving a B.A. from Earlham in 1984, Stephens pursued graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.  At Penn he studied with Charles H. Kahn, Alexander Nehamas, and Martin Ostwald, and received his doctorate in philosophy in 1990. After thirty years on the College of Arts and Sciences faculty at Creighton University in Omaha he was promoted from Professor of Philosophy to Professor Emeritus of Philosophy in December 2020.

Stephens has published articles and book chapters on topics in Stoicism, Epicureanism and friendship, ecology and food ethics, Midwest agrarianism, ethics and animals, sex and love, sportsmanship, and the concept of a person. His books include an English translation of Adolf Bonhöffer’s work The Ethics of the Stoic Epictetus (Peter Lang, 1996, 2000), an edited collection The Person: Readings in Human Nature (Pearson, 2006), Stoic Ethics: Epictetus and Happiness as Freedom (Continuum, 2007), and Marcus Aurelius: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum, 2012). With Scott Aikin he co-authored Epictetus’s Encheiridion: A New Translation and Guide to Stoic Ethics (Bloomsbury, 2023). Stephens’ latest book is Marcus Aurelius: Philosopher-King (Reaktion Books, 2025).

Stephens enjoys tennis, chess, hiking, nature photography, and travel. He has presented papers abroad at conferences in Milan, Athens, London, Toronto, Aix-en-Provence (France), on the island of Rhodes, at Vilia, Greece, and at Palmerston North, New Zealand. He has toured the island of Crete, the northern and southern islands of New Zealand, Iceland, and several of the Galapagos Islands. Stephens has taken cruises to Ensenada, Mexico, the Bahamas, and the Isle of Symi in the Dodecanese island chain. His expedition aboard the National Geographic Endeavor to the Antarctic peninsula was by way of Santiago, Chile and Ushuaia, Argentina. In England he has toured Cornwall, East Sussex, Bournemouth County, the Salisbury Plain (and Stonehenge), the Lake District, the Scottish Highlands, and the Isle of Skye. He has seen Montreal, Vancouver Island, and Victoria, British Columbia. The Hawaiian islands he has explored are Maui (and Haleakalā), Kauai (and Waimea Canyon), and much of Oahu.

In May 2016 he toured much of Poland, from Wiżajny (near the Lithuania border) and Suwałki in the northeast to the lakes of Mikołajki. After presenting two papers at the University of Warsaw he visited Kraków, the Wieliczka salt mine, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. In June 2017 he returned to Poland, presented two papers at the University of Warsaw, and visited Poznań, Jastrowie, and the village of Chwalimie before traveling to Marseille and Aix, France. In September 2019 he traveled to Milan, Venice, and Lake Como, Italy.

His domestic treks include the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier, the Cascades, and the Olympic peninsula in Washington. He has kayaked in the San Juan Islands of Washington and in the Point Reyes National Seashore area of California. He has visited Crater Lake, the Oregon coast, Boundary County, and the Nehalem River. In the Idaho panhandle he has visited the Kootenai River, and Coeur d’ Alene. In California Stephens has hiked in Redwood, Yosemite, and Joshua Tree National Parks, spelunked in Lava Beds National Monument, and visited Crescent City, Tule Lake, Bodega Bay, Monterey, and Big Sur. He has explored Arches National Park, the Moab area, the Valley of the Gods, and Monument Valley in Utah. His travels in Arizona include the Grand Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Petrified Forest National Park, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and Sedona. He has visited Shiprock, Petroglyph National Monument, and Santa Fe in New Mexico. In Colorado he has visited Rocky Mountain National Park, Crested Butte, Mesa Verde, Durango, Royal Gorge, Silverthorne, Breckenridge, Vail, and has traveled over Loveland Pass. In August 2016 Stephens drove Mount Herman Road from Monument to Woodland Park, Colorado. As a boy he visited Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. His travels include the Badlands, Wind Cave, and the Black Hills of South Dakota, Madeline Island off the northern coast of Wisconsin, Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave of Kentucky (the longest known cave system in the world), Acadia National Park in Maine, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and many parts of Florida. He took a gondola ride in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2021. On a visit to New Orleans, Louisiana in February 2024 he toured Saint Louis Cemetery #1, including the tomb of Paul Morphy, the world’s greatest chess master in the 1850s, and the conspicuous nine-foot-tall pyramid mausoleum owned by Nicolas Cage, emblazoned with the Latin phrase omnia ab uno (“from one everything”).

In September 2023 in Snowdonia, Wales, he visited the ancient Roman bridge Pont Wan and explored the castles Conwy, Caernarfon, Criccieth on Cardigan Bay (Bae Ceredigion), Penrhyn Castle and Gardens, and Dolwyddelan Castle. While staying at the hotel Langley Castle in Hexham, Northumberland Stephens viewed a section of the ruins of Hadrian’s Wall. This trip included Newcastle upon Tyne, the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, and Westminster Abbey.

In 2024 Stephens visited all of the Great Lakes: Tawas Point (Huron); Sleeping Bear Dunes (Michigan); Grand Island (Superior); Magee Marsh Wildlife Area in northwestern Ohio (Erie); Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON (Ontario); and Point Edward, ON (Huron again). These trips featured waterfalls of all sizes, from modest Wagner Falls, Munising Falls, Miners Falls, Sable Falls, and the Tannin-colored waters of Tahquamenon Falls in the U.P. of Michigan to Niagara Falls. The rapids of the Niagara River and its green waters, tumbling over the Horseshoe Falls of Canada and the American Falls, were spectacular. One boat tour on Lake Superior featured the magnificent Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and Bridalveil Falls. A second, on a glass-bottomed boat, revealed the shipwrecks of the Bermuda and the Herman H. Hettler. The year ended with a visit to Saint Lucia, one of the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles of the Caribbean.

In September 2025 Stephens visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania.

From an early age Stephens has closely followed the misadventures of the Chicago Cubs, which helps explain his attraction to Stoicism. He was at Progressive Field in Cleveland, Ohio, at 12:47 am on November 3, 2016, when the Cubs won the World Series—their first in 108 years. During the rain delay at the beginning of the tenth inning, he met, chatted with, and cheered up the sports commentator Michael Wilbon, who was understandably sullen after the Cubs blew a three-run lead, in the eighth inning. Stephens winters in Arizona and summers in Michigan with his wife and three cats.

last updated 19 October 2025