SW of Stoics

Stoicism is a philosophical teaching established at about 300 BC by the Greek philosopher Zeno of Citium (Cyprus). Some elements of this teaching could be traced back to the time of Socrates and Plato. The key motivation for establishing this teaching, i believe, was a desire for a person to preserve his well-being under any external circumstances however harsh and unfortunate they might be. Characteristic of stoicism are According to stoics, we have full control of the internal factors influencing our lives and typically have no control whatsoever of the external factors. The internal factors comprise our feelings, dispositions and knowledge, all these driven and supervised by our will. External factors are represented by wealth, power, fame, health etc. The right attitude towards the external factors is indifference - they are neither good nor bad for us. The notions of good and bad are by-products of our attitudes and they make sense only within the realm of the internal things (which we can control). To acquire the right attitude (or a disposition), there is a bunch of principles, each consistent with the order of the universe, which we can learn and follow (e.g. be courageous, be just, be truthful, be generous etc). These principles never change and they are consistent with the notion of good.

Ontology
The most prominent ingredients of the universe of stoics are human beings, free will, and the order of the universe which permeates the whole world. The order of the universe has a strong moral connotations. The physical structure and functioning of the universe, on the other hand, does not matter too much and can be reduced to a bunch of particles driven by some principles. Despite the ordered nature of the universe, it is full of misfortunes. These misfortunes are ubiquitous and of many kinds including natural disasters, social turmoils and individual troubles such as accidents, sicknesses, death etc. Fortunately, people have an antidote to all these problems – they have a free will and reason. They have a capacity to attain happiness (good life) regardless the external factors. That capacity stems from their ability to reason and align their will with the order of the universe.

Cosmology
The universe of stoics is typically a deterministic universe, in a sense that for any set of well-defined deterministic causes there are well defined deterministic consequences. There is no place for exceptions or stochasticity in the chain of cause and effect relations. Follow the rules and you will be happy. Disobey these rules and you will suffer consequences.

The universe of stoics is typically a materialistic universe, void of divine interventions. The only “sacred” entity you will find here is the order of the universe, which we can be interpreted as the law of Nature. The order of the Universe comprises physical and psychological parts. The psychological part matters, the physical part is less important - whatever the physics (or whoever the emperor, or whatever the prison rules) one must live up to the standards of the righteous man. Stoicism makes a deep cut separating psychology and cosmology and through this separation preserves the integrity and stability of the self.

Metaphysics
A multiverse was considered by Lucretius as a possible explanation of the structure of his materialistic universe (Lucretius, 2007). However, as mentioned earlier, stoicism is predominantly about psychology and it does not care much about physics or metaphysics.

Identity
According to stoics, a human being is a privileged creature compared to other animals since he shares with gods the capacity to reason and to direct his will. Epictetus (one of the prominent figures in stoicism) believes also that people have innate perception of what is good and what is not. The only problem is that it is not always clear as to how apply this innate understanding to particular situations of everyday life. To fill this gap, he runs a philosophy school where students learn how to use their innate capacity for the right judgement in practice.

Practice
Practice is central to stoicism. It is impossible to become a stoic by just reading a book. To become a stoic, one has to cultivate special qualities which would help him to withstand a misfortune. Michele Foucault calls this practice “care of self” (Michele Foucault, 2007. “Hermeneutics of Subject”, Nauka, Sankt-Petersburg, 677 p.) and argues that “care of self” was on the forefront of the culture in ancient Greece, Rome and during the time of Christianity. After the enlightenment period, however, the cultural significance and persistence of the “care of self” has been overtaken by the concept of “know yourself”, even though the later is just a marginal element of the former. The rest of this chapter outlines briefly Foucault’s interpretation of the meaning of this term.

According to Foucault, the meaning of the term “care of self” evolved through the course of the history. In ancient Greece, “care of self” meant care about one’s soul. For example, in “Apologies of Socrates”, Socrates advocates care of the soul as one of the most important practices to exercise. “You look after your wealth and prosperity, you worry about your carrier and health, but you ignore the most important thing in your life, which is your soul”. Why do you need to care about your soul? In “Alkiviade” Socrates urges a young man, Alkiviade, to take care of his soul, because Alkiviade is going to become a governor, and the key job of the governor is to take care of others. To take care of others, one must master himself first, which is to take care of his soul. To achieve this goal, Alkiviade has to learn the right knowledge, including the right attitude, right judgements etc. So, for Socrates, the term “look after your soul” takes very pragmatic, down to earth meaning – it means to learn new knowledge and skills to properly discharge one’s social duties. On Plato’s view, on the other hand, the meaning of the “care of self” is more abstract and detached from everyday life. It involves discovering in your soul an imprint of something transcendental, divine and ideal, residing above and beyond the human being. And the method of discovering this imprint, I believe, is through the philosophical contemplation.

In Hellenistic era “care of self” becomes a therapeutic practice. A man who lacks a stoic attitude is considered a sick man. The main purpose of the care of self is to cure that man from this sickness – help him to eradicate bad habits and make his soul clear. Note that unlike to “Alkiviade”, where a man has to excel in order to help others, in Hellenistic era the ultimate purpose of the care of self becomes an individual himself rather than the well-being of others. The objective of the care is to establish a certain kind of relationship to yourself, i.e. to be the host of yourself, to be cool, to be in control, to be independent of circumstances, and be happy and content with yourself. For Roman philosophers (Seneca, Plutarch, and Epictetus), there is no other goal and other subject of the “care of self” except of the self which rediscovers itself. Care of self becomes an everyday routine, like a physical exercise or hygiene, one does it for the sake of himself.

Because of the therapeutic meaning attached to the notion of “care of self”, one must take care of his self throughout the life time. For Musonius Rufus, a Roman Stoic philosopher of the 1 century AD, “if you want a salvation you will have to take care of yourself all your life”. Taking care of self is not just a kind of exercise or course of lectures you take at school or university once in a lifetime. It is a work to be carried out throughout the whole life, kind of a lifestyle. According to Epicurus: “It is never too early and never too late to take care of the self. Hence, you must practice philosophy throughout your life time.”(REF) Conversely, in “Alkiviade” Socrates urges young man, Alkiviade, to take care of his self when he is young, because “when you are 50 years old, it is too late”. (NM there is a somewhat similar statement by Confucius: if you failed to have respect, friends and fame by 40, no chances you may have all these later. Hm-m? First, i though, i missed this train but then realised, i disembarked it server years ago - so far so good).

A few centuries later, “care of self” becomes the central point of Grigory Nissky’s askesa, who compares the care of self with the search of the lost cent-coin - to find it, you switch on lights, turn all the furniture around, look in the darkest corners of the room, until you see a glint of the metal. Analogously, to find an image of the God in your soul (which is not clean because of your dirty flesh and desires), you will have to take care of yourself - switch on the light of you reason, and search in the darkest corners of your soul.

One example of stoic practices provides askesa (remember renouncers practicing ascetic life style in the time of Buddha). Another example, offered by Foucault, provide true speeches. These true speeches are neither about the nature of a human being nor about the nature of the world. They are speeches about our knowledge and dispositions towards certain events. They outline places and roles we play under this or that circumstances. These true speeches does not exist separately from a human being, but comprise the corner stone of his nature. They are to be hardwired into his mentality and reflexes so that in a critical situation he does not need to remember them - he just reacts. The goal of practice is to make from this truth (speeches) a quasi-subject that will guide our decisions. Note that there are no gods, or spirits, nor other divine entities involved in these practices - just texts to be memorised and built into the memory and reflexes.

How to make these speeches part of yourself? There are a number of techniques to bind together the subject and the truth (the truth here is defined as the right attitude, i.e. courage, hope, justice etc):
  1. Meditation. Imagine yourself that the worst scenario you fear has already happened. Analyse it and see it is not so bad as you may have thought.
  2. Exercise endurance, physical strength, courage, generosity etc. The key goal here is not the physical health but rather the strength of the will.
  3. Thoughts about death.
  4. Other…
A common belief shared by many stoics is that you cannot heal yourself, and always need a teacher, instructor who can help you to become a better person.

Values
The major concern of stoics is with good life or happiness, though their understanding of these notions has some peculiar connotations. First, it makes sense to distinguish between stoics who understand happiness as a well-being of others (Socrates) and stoics who take happiness to represent the well-being of the self (Roman philosophers).

Another point worth mentioning here is that, I think, the notion of the well-being is understood by stoics in a somewhat deficient mode. They focus on various kinds of misfortune and emphasise means of overcoming this misfortune but say little about the well-being itself. The well-being associated with positive emotions and states, the well-being of happiness and joy, is somewhat less prominent in this philosophy.

Finally, there is an interesting twist in the system of values suggested by stoics, where the meaning of the notion “misfortune” is altered to acquire a flavour of a positive rather than a negative phenomenon. This twist is conducted through the reinterpretation of the meaning of one’s life as the “life as a trial”. The idea is that God prepares people he loves by sending them misfortune and disaster, so that they can grow spiritually and eventually join him in his kingdom. Those, he does not care about, spend their lives indulging themselves in luxury. They may have healthy body and sound spirit but they do not know their souls are sick, and the medicine is poverty, sickness and other misfortune.

Contradictions
One of contradictions often mentioned in literature with regard to the philosophy of stoics is a contradiction between the free will and the ordered deterministic nature of the universe. There is also an obvious contradiction between the conception of the universe at the time of Lucretius and the modern understanding of physics. The major thesis of stoics which states that good life is achievable regardless external conditions, contradicts to Aristitle’s view that certain minimum of external goods is required in order to achieve a good life. Further, there is an apparent contradiction between the goal of the good life, and an instrumental role that misfortune plays in achieving that goal.

As we see, there are quite a few contradictions in the philosophy of stoics. But the point I find most interesting and controversial is about a psychological aspect of this theory. I believe, the most striking feature of the stoicism is the fact that it works – it is capable of delivering good life (or at least showing some glimpses of it). To appreciate this point, note that stoicism is often rooted in materialism, which states there is nothing beyond this short span of the time we call life. We are just a bunch of particles. We have no purpose, the life makes no sense, and yet … stoicism somehow succeeds in turning the life of a noble man into a meaningful and even attractive adventure.

I think, there are at least two pillars underpinning the magic of stoicism. One is that the materialism itself has an innate capacity to produce and maintain certain psychology through the appeal to rational reasoning and analysis. The line of reasoning goes roughly as follows. Since a human being is just a bunch of particles, same as anything else in the universe, and all these huge universe with its vast expenses in both space and time, evolves through time, indifferent to any ups and downs, which we ourselves imagine and take it for real, zooming in and out these grand scales and putting the life of a human being in a perspective, shows that there is nothing we shall worry about. We are just a bunch of particles evolving through time. Why care about this or that configuration of particles, which evolves according to its own rules, regardless of what we think or feel? The least we can hope for to achieve through such reasoning is to cut out some unhealthy sentiments and feelings.

Another pillar underpinning stoicism, I think, stems from the artistic description of the man and the universe, which transcends the realm of the materialistic world and spills over into the realm of the poetry. Writings by stoics stimulate and arouse feelings. For example, Lucretius’s “ The Nature of Things” is written as a poetry rather than a prose. Epictetus’s “Discourse” is written in prose, but also appeals to both the reason and our aesthetic perception.

Stoicism is instrumental to self-help practices of modern days. The understanding and the vision of a human being and the nature of the Universe has evolved substantially since the time of Epictetus and yet the same texts and the same techniques work today as they did almost 2 thousand years ago - the art of stoics does not age.

Apart from intelligent reasoning and aesthetic perception, stoicism includes some elements of ethics as well. While rules and customs change from one culture to another, the notion of stoicism migrates across cultural boundaries with ease, and I believe, one of the reasons for such an agility is that certain virtues pertinent to stoicism are common across cultures (…). The stoicism is a theory about preserving these virtues through the alignment of our attitudes with the order of the universe which is meant to surpass a contingent individual and provide an absolute anchoring point, the fundamental background, sustaining a noble self.

A critical feature underpinning the teaching of stoicism is a rift it introduces between cosmology and psychology. You can achieve good life under different cosmological dressings. The cosmology does not condition psychology; in fact it is conceivable to think about cosmology conditioned by psychology. If the quality of life could be attained independently from the description of the cosmology, than we are ripe for another Copernican revolution declaring that we can build whatever cosmology we want just from purely aesthetic reasons and the god life is already secured through the right psychology. The cosmology now can be considered as a kind of a particular therapeutical technique for zooming in and out spatial and time scales in order to achieve certain psychological states, or reinstating clean and sterile nature of the universe void of any inherent evil and suffering.

This practice of almost abandoning cosmology and focusing exclusively on a psychology is not unique to stoicism. Buddha didn’t talk much about the nature. Confucius, the master of rituals, somehow managed to do his job without referring to spirits either (some of his contemporaries believing that following rituals and not believing in after-world and sprits makes as much sense as casting a net into the pond with no fish). Christianity is known for a poor description of the cosmology. And indeed, as long as the goal of the game is the well-being and the good life, you may not need detailed description of the universe. The notion of good life transcends the notion of cosmology.

Concluding remarks on stoicism
Because of its simplicity and minimal dependency on any external factors stoicism is an incredibly resilient teaching capable of surviving in almost any culture. The only threat to this teaching, I believe, may come in the idealistic future of all round happiness and prosperity. Until then, there is always a market for a hero who no matter what, does not succumb to the misfortune. Many people practice stoicism, or elements of this teaching, nowadays under different disguises. People in oppressive regimes, people in prison, terminally sick, people in the time of disaster, etc. Stoicism helps them to transcend the external world and achieve a good life through the art and poetry inherent to this teaching.

Stoicism is a great teaching, but, to my mind, the vision of the world it is offering is somewhat deficient, in a sense that it depicts the world full of misfortune and leaves little choices to the inhabitants of this world to fix it. I would prefer to live in the world that can be fixed when needed, and, I believe, in many cases it is in our powers to fulfil this task. Stoic is an imprisoned “phronimos”, he is a man of many virtues except of the one - he is not capable of creating, or inventing, designing, reshaping the external world. In this sense he is a passive hero. He adapts rather than reacts. Someone compared him to a dog tied to the cart. The dog has only two choices: either to follow the cart or be dragged behind it. Stoicism teaches us to follow the cart and cannot offer us other options. Use it as the last resort to solve the problem when all other means have been exhausted.