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 studying ancient civilisations and Latin with the inspiring 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 his B.A. from Earlham in 1984, Stephens pursued graduate study at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. At Penn he studied with Charles H. Kahn, Alexander Nehamas, and Martin Ostwald, receiving 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 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 The Ethics of the Stoic Epictetus, an English translation of Adolf Bonhöffer’s work (Peter Lang, 1996, 2000; revised edition, 2021); 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). His latest book is Marcus Aurelius: Philosopher-King (Reaktion Books, 2025).

Stephens enjoys tennis, chess, hiking, nature photography, and travel. He has presented papers at conferences in Milan, Athens, London, Toronto, Aix-en-Provence, Rhodes, Vilia, and Palmerston North, New Zealand. His travels have taken him to Crete, New Zealand, Iceland, the Galapagos Islands, and the Antarctic peninsula by way of Santiago, Chile, and Ushuaia, Argentina. Stephens has taken cruises to Ensenada, Mexico, the Bahamas, and the Isle of Symi in the Dodecanese island chain. In England he toured Cornwall, East Sussex, Bournemouth, Salisbury Plain and Stonehenge, the Lake District, the Scottish Highlands, and the Isle of Skye. He has visited Montreal, Vancouver Island, and Victoria, British Columbia. In Hawaiʻi, he has explored Maui, including Haleakalā, Kauai, including Waimea Canyon, and much of Oahu.

In May 2016, he toured much of Poland, from Wiżajny, near the Lithuanian border, and Suwałki in the northeast to the lakes of Mikołajki. He also visited Warsaw, Kraków, the Wieliczka salt mine, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. In June 2017, he returned to Poland and visited Poznań, Jastrowie, and the village of Chwalimie before travelling to Marseille and Aix, France. In September 2019, he travelled to Milan, Venice, and Lake Como, Italy.

His domestic travels have taken him from the Pacific Northwest to the desert Southwest and beyond. In Washington, he has hiked the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier, explored the Cascades and the Olympic Peninsula, and kayaked in the San Juan Islands. He has also kayaked near Point Reyes National Seashore in California. In Oregon and Idaho, he has visited Crater Lake, the Oregon coast, Boundary County, the Nehalem River, the Kootenai River, and Coeur d’Alene. In California, he 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.

The desert Southwest has been a recurring destination. Stephens has explored Arches National Park, the Moab area, the Valley of the Gods, and Monument Valley in Utah; the Grand Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Petrified Forest National Park, Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and Sedona in Arizona; and Shiprock, Petroglyph National Monument, and Santa Fe in New Mexico. His travels in Colorado include Rocky Mountain National Park, Crested Butte, Mesa Verde, Durango, Royal Gorge, Silverthorne, Breckenridge, Vail, Loveland Pass, and, in August 2016, Mount Herman Road from Monument to Woodland Park.

He visited Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks as a boy, and his later travels have included the Badlands, Wind Cave, and the Black Hills of South Dakota; Madeline Island off the northern coast of Wisconsin; Mammoth-Flint Ridge Cave in 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. In New Orleans he toured Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1, which contains the tomb of Paul Morphy, the world’s greatest chess master in the 1850s, as well as the conspicuous nine-foot pyramid mausoleum owned by Nicolas Cage and emblazoned with the Latin phrase omnia ab uno, “from one, everything.”

In 2023, Stephens travelled in Snowdonia, Wales, where he visited the ancient Roman bridge Pont Wan and explored Conwy, Caernarfon, Criccieth Castle on Cardigan Bay (Bae Ceredigion), Penrhyn Castle and Gardens, and Dolwyddelan Castle. While staying at Langley Castle in Hexham, Northumberland, he viewed a section of Hadrian’s Wall, which he had first visited in his youth. The trip also 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 five Great Lakes: Tawas Point on Lake Huron; Sleeping Bear Dunes on Lake Michigan; Grand Island on Lake Superior; Magee Marsh Wildlife Area in northwestern Ohio on Lake Erie; Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, on Lake Ontario; and Point Edward, Ontario, on Lake Huron again. These trips featured waterfalls of every scale, from Wagner Falls, Munising Falls, Miners Falls, Sable Falls, and the tannin-coloured waters of Tahquamenon Falls in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Niagara Falls itself. The green waters and rapids of the Niagara River, tumbling over Canada’s Horseshoe Falls and the American Falls, were spectacular. One Lake Superior boat tour passed the magnificent Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and Bridalveil Falls; another, on a glass-bottomed boat, revealed the wrecks 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 in the Caribbean.

In 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. At Progressive Field in Cleveland, Ohio, at 12:47 a.m. on November 3, 2016, he witnessed the Cubs win 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 sports commentator Michael Wilbon, who was understandably sullen after the Cubs blew a three-run lead in the eighth inning. Stephens, his wife, and their two cats divide their time between Arizona and Michigan.

last updated 10 May 2026