As I begin again to write more, I wanted to share with my friends some of what I’ve been reading recently about stoic philosophy. I have found this a fascinating subject. I have had the book with which I started my learning sitting upon my shelf for years. In the process I discovered that I had read stoics as far back as secondary school when I read some of the writings of the roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. I can’t say that made a lasting impression, but that was more than thirty-eight years ago. In the meantime, I have been part of our modern misunderstanding of stoicism. Like so many, I assumed that the modern English words “stoic” and “stoicism” were defined from the content of the philosophy, “…but as I read the Stoics, I discovered that almost everything I thought I knew about them was wrong.” (Irvine 2008, 7)
Photo by David Wright Gibson. 1989.
The stoics were a school of philosophy. This is more literally what it sounds like in modern language. A school of philosophy existed to attract students and offer them a path to a life well lived in addition to skills in rhetoric required to excel in Greek (and later Roman) society. (Irving 2008, 24) In modern times we have reduced the stoic school to a caricature of itself by reducing it to a word for “lacking in emotion.” Stoics did not want to reject and repudiate all emotion. In fact they knew this to be impossible. “The Stoics realized that a life plagued with negative emotions—including anger, anxiety, fear, grief, and envy—will not be a good life.” (Irving 2008, 5) The question was how to limit the negative emotions and achieve a stronger state of tranquility that was not subject to the many external forces that swirl through our lives.
One of the aspects of the writing of Professor Irving that struck me is the connection he makes with buddhism.
Stoicism and Zen have certain things in common. They both, for example, stress the importance of contemplating the transitory nature of the world around us and the importance of mastering desire, to the extent that it is possible to do so. They also advise us to pursue tranquility and give us advice on how to attain and maintain it.(Irving 2008, 6).
There is a way to move beyond this ignorance, pessimism, and confusion, and to experience—rather than comprehend—Reality as a Whole. This experience is not based on any conception or belief; it is direct perception itself. It’s seeing before signs appear, before ideas sprout, before falling into thought. (Hagen 2013, 2)
And like the philosophical teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, which culminate in becoming a buddha, stoicism has an ideal form that is called the sage.
By Paolo Monti CC BY-SA 4.0
A Stoic sage, according to Diogenes Laertius, is “free from vanity; for he is indifferent to good or evil report.” He never feels grief, since he realizes that grief is an “irrational contraction of the soul.” His conduct is exemplary. He doesn’t let anything stop him from doing his duty. Although he drinks wine, he doesn’t do so in order to get drunk. The Stoic sage is, in short, “godlike.” (Irving 2008, 37)
This is not, however, expected to be a solemn life akin to the Vulcans of Star Trek.
[Seneca] also asserts that someone who practices Stoic principles “must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys.” (Irvine 2008, 7-8)
So then the question is about how we begin to work toward the aspiration of sage? How do we reduce the suffering of life or the disruption of negative emotions? Professor Irving offers us several steps or practices from the writings of the stoics who have gone before us such as Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Panaetius of Rhodes, Seneca, Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Irving calls these Stoic Psychological Techniques.
- Negative Visualization: what if I lost what I have in the way of people, possessions, or circumstances?
- Dichotomy of Control: what can I control, what can I partially control, and what is utterly beyond my control?
- Fatalism: letting go of the past and the present, since it is the past at the moment it happens.
- Self-Denial: by living without a person, possession, or circumstance we learn what we do not need, and appreciate better the comforts we have.
- Meditation: watching ourselves practice stoicism.
He then proceeds to what he calls Stoic Advice, which several of the writers, particularly Epictetus, used as a teaching technique.
Photo by David Wright Gibson in Lhasa. 2007.
In the end, the goal is one that resonates with the buddhist Eight Fold Path: “The eight aspects of this path are right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation.” (Hagen 2013, 59) We must begin with right view that we achieve by understanding what is actually happening around us, rather than being trapped in the delusions that result from the sapien ability to imagine.
However, fiction has enabled us not merely to imagine things, but to do so collectively. We can weave common myths such as the biblical creation story, the Dreamtime myths of Aboriginal Australians, and the nationalist myths of modern states. (Harari 2015, KL 421)
This is a serious strength in the species, but it has its dark side. We believe in the reality of Canada, Microsoft, and the teachings of a chosen religion. This allows us, as Harari says, to bind ourselves into massive groups. Billions know themselves as Muslims (المسلمون) and more than forty-eight million people know themselves as Spanish. This is all a productive product of our imagination. But when we imagine what another person is thinking, or we imagine we know what is about to happen, we can create confusion in our relationships and dissatisfaction with our life when it does not meet our expectations. As our friends in another spiritual tradition often say, expectations are premeditated resentments.
By practicing the stoicism of Zeno or following the eightfold path of Siddhartha, we are working to reduce the duḥkha or negative aspects of our lives. We come to a peaceful relationship with our own death and appreciate better the time we have. I hope to come to a more productive position to contribute in my small way to the lives of those around me and be a better friend and spouse. Tomorrow is not promised.
References
Hagen, Steve. 2013. Buddhism Plain and Simple: The Practice of Being Aware Right Now, Every Day. Tuttle Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Harari, Yuval Noah. 2015. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Holiday, Ryan. 12 (Stoic) Rules for Life: An ancient guide to the good life. The Daily Stoic. Retrieved 2024-10-12.
Irvine, William Braxton. 2008. A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. Oxford University Press. Kindle edition.
Having finally gotten close to the end of Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation, it is ironic you wrote this. She charts the development of the main religious programs among humans. Historians refer to it as The Axial Age and the commonalities within the thought are fascinating. However, she is not kind to the early Stoics. “There is a fatalism in all these third-century Greek philosophers that was anathema to the Axial Age. ” (Anderson, 2006, p. 422) She maintains the Stoic wants to maintain the status quo rather than change things, even for the better. “Instead of making the heroic effort to discover a realm of transcendent peace within, the Hellenistic philosophers were prepared to settle for a quiet life.” (Anderson, 2005, p. 424)
Stoicism is a philosophy for the old. I encounter it in my own writing. My fictional society needs to change much like our own world but those who prefer stability to change are fighting it. So, it is with ours, but your oldest sister is optimistic. She sees hope in her sons.
I think Anderson needs to do more reading and research. The sentence you quote there about heroic effort doesn’t make any sense. It sounds like she is reading secondary sources that are themselves older as the stoics fell into a deep disregard for many years, to the point we actually gravely misunderstand the philosophy in our common use of the word stoic. In fact, during the rise of the chrisitian era, the use of philosophy as a guide to a good life was deprecated. Irving talks about this with chagrin as he is a professor of philosphy, but he finds that in no way does a philosphy department help people live life to the fullest.
I hardly think any of the ancient stoics we know about were leading what one would call a quiet life. Seneca was so deep into the political life that he was eventually executed. Epictetus was a slave who upon being freed established a stoic school and then was exiled to Greece where he built it up in Nicopolis. Marcus Aurelius was emperor of Rome, not a retiring sort of job, even if you weren’t as capable as he is thought to have been. Also, Marcus was an adherent of stoicism for most of his life, including as a young adult. It is part of the logic of stoicism and their conclusions about human life that as rational, social beings, we have obligations and a good life must include meeting the demands of duty.
I find it interesting how her perspective on stoicism mirrors the christian calumnies against buddhism. The idea that one simply is navel gazing and failing to do anything is a very superficial understanding of the philosophical underpinnings. The second of the eight-fold path is right action. And your neighbor out in Bastrop is hardly settling for the quiet life:
https://dailystoic.com/12-rules-for-life/