Just as the propositions, “It is day,” and “It is night,” are full of meaning when separated, but meaningless if united; so also, granted that for you to take the larger share at a dinner is good for your body, still, it is bad for the maintenance of the proper kind of social feeling. When, therefore, you are eating with another person, remember to regard, not merely the value for your body of what lies before you, but also to maintain your respect for your host.

Commentary

The Socratic Method of question and answer was an attempt to expose contradictions. Socrates believed that reason directs us to resolve contradictions in our own thinking when they’re made obvious enough to us. Something can’t be true if it’s a contradiction in terms. This idea that thoughts need to be, at the very least, coherent spread its influence throughout ancient philosophy and permeated Stoicism. Today psychologists refer to the discomfort caused by awareness of contradictions in our own thinking as “cognitive dissonance”.

Read more

In this episode, I chat with Claudia Mills, an emerita professor of philosophy and award-winning author of more than sixty books for young readers. Her new novel, Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom, is about a difficult young student who joins a philosophy club seeking the wisdom she needs to keep her beloved but equally difficult dog.

Highlights

• To what extent do you think children can benefit from learning about ancient philosophy?

• Do you think there are any ways in which children have an advantage over adults when it comes to learning about Greek philosophy?

• How can parents help their children to learn about and benefit from philosophy?

• What is wisdom?

• What drew you to Epictetus in particular for this story?

• What about Socrates and Plato?

• What are the problems faced by Calliope, and how does philosophy help her?

• In what ways do you think children could potentially benefit from ancient philosophy in terms of their psychological well being?

Links

• Goodreads profile

• Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom

Many people come to Stoicism through books, quotations, podcasts, or online articles. That can be a very good beginning. Sooner or later, though, most of us discover that understanding Stoic ideas is not the same as being able to apply them when we are stressed and under pressure. That is where one-to-one coaching can sometimes help.

I began my training in counselling and psychotherapy around three decades ago, after completing my first degree in philosophy. Since then, I’ve been exploring ways to combine philosophy and therapy, through books such as How to Think Like a Roman Emperor and How to Think Like Socrates, and also through my coaching practice.

The clients I work with, typically through weekly or bi-weekly Google Meet video calls, come from all over the world, and all sorts of different backgrounds. Their goals almost always fall, however, into one of two broad categories:

• Living a more meaningful and fulfilling life, in accord with their core values

• Coping more resiliently with stress, and emotions such as anger, sadness, or anxiety

For many years, as a psychotherapist in the UK, I specialized in the treatment of clinical anxiety disorders but in recent years I’ve become more interested in helping people with anger. I work with a wide variety of men and women, though, from different backgrounds, who are dealing with a variety of other problems.

In this article, I’m going to briefly explain a bit more about how Stoicism can be employed in coaching. At the end, I have provided details on how you can contact me if you’re interested in booking a session.

Stoicism in Coaching

It would be easy to write a whole book about Stoicism and coaching, or to talk about it for days and days, because it’s such a rich subject, but I’ll keep it brief here by just focusing on two key concepts, which correspond with the areas I mentioned above: your life values and emotional resilience.

Life Values

People are often drawn to Stoicism because of the emphasis it places on the cardinal virtues: wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Underlying that, though, there’s a profound philosophical insight about the nature of motivation. Stoicism, like other ancient “virtue ethics”, makes a sharp distinction between the value we place on our own character traits (virtues) and the value we place on external “goods”, which Epictetus glosses as “health, wealth, and reputation”. We can choose to act more consistently in accord with our core character-based values, from moment to moment, but whether or not we achieve external success is always partly in the hands of fate.

We find a remarkably similar distinction, between different types of values, at the heart of modern evidence-based psychotherapy. Research has now confirmed that people who suffer from clinical depression tend to place a disproportionate amount of emphasis on external outcomes, in the future, and to forget about the value they can derive, each moment, from their own actions. It’s natural to work toward external goals but if we lose sight of our own character, life can begin to feel empty and devoid of real meaning. The same issue can affect other emotions, for instance, if we worry more about what other people think of us rather than asking whether our current actions are aligned with our values, we can end up with nothing but anxiety.

Coaching, one to one, provides an excellent way to reflect on, and clarify your goals and values, and track how consistently your actions each day align with them. If you’re only concerned about “What ifs” and the future, it’s difficult to keep yourself grounded in the reality of the here and now, which is our natural home, and locus of control. Connecting with your values, in the right way, can make life more enriching, and solve a number of emotional problems, by putting you back in the driving seat, rather than allowing “other stuff” to take over your life. Stoicism teaches us how to get our lives back on track by studying our own values more carefully, from a philosophical perspective.

Emotional Resilience

The pioneer of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), Albert Ellis, taught a passage from the Stoic Handbook of Epictetus to all of his clients. We can probably say this is the most famous Stoic quote of all.

People are not disturbed by events, but by their opinions about them. — Enchiridion, 5

That’s the foundation of what we call the “cognitive” theory of emotion today. However, there’s another passage at the beginning of the Handbook, which I find equally important.

Straightaway then practise saying to every troubling impression, “You are just an impression, and not entirely what you appear to be.” — Enchiridion, 1

The Stoics believed that strong emotions, such as fear and anxiety, can take over when we allow ourselves to identify certain impressions we have with reality. Today, psychologists call these impressions “automatic thoughts”, and the process of becoming trapped in them is often called “cognitive fusion”. When we become angry or afraid, for instance, we get the impression that something bad is going to happen, or has already harmed us. We then fuse that idea so tightly with reality, that we begin to take it for granted, for a while, without slowing down to examine whether it could be clouding our judgment and leading us into deeper problems.

It’s not necessarily even that our initial thoughts or impressions are false, in the conventional sense, but rather that we accept them too inflexibly, especially when they contain strong value judgments that evoke powerful emotions. If I get the impression that someone doesn’t like me, it’s possible I could be mistaken. Even if I’m right, though, I may risk falling into the trap of treating their criticism of me as “AWFUL” and “UNBEARABLE”, my emotions making me forgetful that these are my own subjective evaluations. Other people, perhaps wisely, might judge the same situation to be merely unfortunate but not awful, and as difficult but not unbearable.

The perspective of a life coach, and the teachings of Stoicism and modern psychology, can help us to gain perspective on our own emotions. We can train ourselves to pause and examine troubling impressions, as Epictetus advised. We now know that the ability to separate thoughts from facts can not only help reduce the intensity of certain emotions but also provides us with greater psychological flexibility, which means that we will tend to engage in more constructive problem-solving, and make better decisions over time. This comes from developing our ability to think clearly, and look at the bigger picture, rather than allowing fear and anger to hold us captive.

Interested in One-to-One Coaching?

I currently have a few openings for one-to-one coaching over the next few weeks. Have you struggled to apply Stoicism or CBT to problems such as anger, anxiety, stress, procrastination, or relationship conflicts? Coaching with me may be suitable if you are dealing with these kinds of problems, or if you have reached a point in life where you feel stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure how to move forward.

In practice, coaching usually involves clarifying the problem you want to work on, identifying the thoughts, emotions, and ways of coping that potentially keep it going, and then developing practical strategies to help you respond differently in daily life.

If you are interested in working with me, please get in touch and let me know what you would like help with:

Contact me

I’ll reply with more information about my current availability, fees, and the next steps for booking an initial session. Note: Because I only see coaching clients on a limited number of days each week, I can only take on a small number of new clients at a time.

Best wishes,

In this episode, I chat with Mark Forstater, the producer of over 30 films, including Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He is the author of a number of books, including The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius, The Spiritual Teachings of Seneca, and The Living Wisdom of Socrates, as well as books on yogic philosophy and Daoism. His most recent book, The 7th Python: A Twat’s Tale, documents his experience of working with the Pythons, and a protracted legal battle that he found himself fighting, and winning, decades later.

Highlights

• How did you get into Marcus Aurelius and Seneca? What motivated you to adapt them for modern readers and what are the main ideas that you take from their writings?

• You’ve also written about Socrates, how do you feel he compares with the Stoics as a guide today?

• What, if anything, do you think that working in movies can teach us about how the mind works?

• Have you found Stoic ideas helpful during stressful periods in your own life? During your legal battles for example?

• Could you imagine there being another movie about Marcus Aurelius?

Links

• Goodreads profile

• The Spiritual Teachings of Marcus Aurelius

• The Spiritual Teachings of Seneca

• The Living Wisdom of Socrates

• The 7th Python

I’ve been a guest four times now on Chris Williamson’s Modern Wisdom podcast and it’s probably one the most-viewed things that I’ve done. Here are links to all four videos. Feel free to share!

When you do a thing which you have made up your mind ought to be done, never try not to be seen doing it, even though most people are likely to think unfavourably about it. If, however, what you are doing is not right, avoid the deed itself altogether; but if it is right, why fear those who are going to rebuke you wrongly?

Commentary

Marcus Aurelius likewise says that we should do nothing that we should be ashamed to admit in public.

Never value anything as profitable to yourself which shall compel you to break your promise, to lose your self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to behave hypocritically, to desire anything which needs walls and curtains. — Meditations, 3.7

This sounds rather like something a Cynic philosopher might have said, perhaps. For Stoics as well, though, what matters most is simply whether an action is virtuous or not, and how others respond is ultimately indifferent.

Read more

Thank you , , , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with ! Join me for my next live video in the app.

In this excerpt from the Introduction to my latest book, How to Think Like Socrates, I explain its relevance to the modern political climate. (Check out the audiobook, which has 4.8 stars from Audible reviewers.) Since the book was published, readers have noted more and more parallels between the Peloponnesian War, in which Socrates fought, and which shaped his philosophical concerns, and our modern world. Socratic philosophy can only be understood, I believe, in relation to the political rhetoric of the time. Philosophy, to a large extent, evolved as a remedy against the use of rhetoric to manipulate our emotions and our impression of the world. We need the same therapy today, to counter the effect of political propaganda and other forms of manipulation in the Age of the Internet.

Why Ancient Philosophy Matters Today

We should brace ourselves for the possibility that reflecting philosophically on our own deepest values may lead us to question some of the prevailing values of the society in which we live.

As I became more interested in Socrates’s life and the period in which he lived, I was struck by how many parallels there are with recent history. The Athens of Socrates was a fledgling democracy, in which the basic strengths and weaknesses of that system were laid bare. Their city initially flourished, and built up strong alliances, under the leadership of great statesmen, in whom the people believed wholeheartedly. Following the outbreak of a great war and a devastating pandemic, however, their trust in government was shaken, leading to a split between two political factions that became more extreme and polarized as they fought for control of the state. The political and legal systems of Athens strained under the weight of corruption, as their weaknesses were exploited to the maximum. Demagogues soon realized that populist measures and emotive rhetoric could be used to manipulate the people and to swing votes in the Assembly, by pandering to human weaknesses such as greed, fear, and anger.

Professional advisors, the Sophists, became increasingly famous, and staggeringly wealthy, by teaching politicians the art of persuasion. These men gave celebrated speeches themselves, which often exploited common insecurities and prejudices. A curious hybrid of political and self-improvement rhetoric evolved, which encouraged privileged young men to view contempt for their perceived inferiors as something “strong” and “manly.” The violent suppression of foreign nations abroad and total loss of faith in the democratic process at home led, in due course, to armed coups, political purges, and even civil war. Socrates didn’t explicitly align himself with any political faction or system of government, but rather his main concern was whether or not those wielding power possessed the wisdom and virtue that might make them competent to be in charge. He was, however, forced to watch as Athenian democracy was first hijacked by demagogues and then reverted to an “oligarchy,” or rule by the few, which ultimately collapsed into “tyranny,” or what we call “authoritarianism.”

I will leave it to you to observe more specific parallels between ancient Athens and our modern political landscape. Different people may perhaps draw quite different, and even opposing, conclusions about what lessons we should learn. Most of us can agree, however, that the struggles of Athenian democracy throughout the Peloponnesian War, which marked the main period of Socrates’s life with which we are concerned, provide a clear warning to us regarding both the fragility of the democratic system and its vulnerability to abuse. Socrates, if anything, was a critic of the Athenian democratic system, particularly the ease with which speakers could sway votes by pandering to the worst tendencies, or vices, of the people. Nevertheless, the ability to reason well and maintain self-awareness, then as now, may be our best defense against the rhetoric of fear and anger that threatens to tear our democracy apart, as it once tore apart that of Athens.

Who is the Modern Cleon?

[In this excerpt, I describe the Athenian demagogue Cleon. You’ll arguably find similar politicians and political commentators today all around the world. This is a historically accurate depiction of how the Athenian empire was hijacked by demagogues.]

The war that followed the Battle of Potidaea exceeded any previously recorded in Western history. Whereas the Trojan War, if we are to believe Homer, had lasted ten years, this war between Athens and Sparta would last twenty-seven. The two main combatants were at the peak of their martial powers. Sparta had become the great beast of the land, with an infantry feared by every other nation. Athens had become the great beast of the sea, ruling the waves with a fleet of around three hundred ships. Most of the other Greek cities were forced to ally themselves with one side or the other, joining the Delian League of Athens or the Peloponnesian League of Sparta. The war would engulf the whole Mediterranean world and even drew in the neighboring “barbarian” races of Thrace and Persia.

The Athenians called it the Peloponnesian War after the region in which Sparta and most of her allies were located. The Spartans must have thought of it as the Athenian War and, although its first phase is named after the Spartan king Archidamus, we might also think of it as the War of Pericles, the Athenian statesman under whom it began. The Periclean war strategy was clearly stated and well known to every citizen: Athens must refrain from further expansion, hold her existing empire together, avoid fighting the Spartans on the land, trust in her navy, retain total control of the waves, and endure patiently until her enemies grew exhausted and sued for peace. Though distasteful at first to many Athenians, who would rather have gone out to fight and defend their farmlands, this strategy was based on sound knowledge of Athens’s strengths and weaknesses as well as those of her adversaries. Pericles was now dead, however, and the course of the war would soon be shaped by the influence of political orators pushing for a change of strategy.

Although Pericles was a Democrat, and something of a populist, he tried to reconcile the interests of common people and aristocrats for the greater good of Athens, and he would challenge the will of the people where necessary. Cleon was also a Democrat, but more radically populist, and in some ways the opposite of Pericles. If Pericles was a moderate, Cleon was an outright firebrand. To garner support, he denounced the prudent but unpopular strategy of withdrawing the population within the city. Although he inherited a lucrative business, critics claimed that he entered politics heavily in debt. He used the war, they said, as a cover for enriching himself by extorting money from Athenian aristocrats and foreign allies, accepting bribes, and embezzling public funds.

Pericles had appealed to what was best in the people; Cleon to what was worst. He would yell insults at his opponents in the Assembly, running to and fro, hitching up his robe and slapping his thigh, for dramatic effect. It worked. The people found his unusually brash style more entertaining than the polished rhetoric of established statesmen such as Nicias. In the aftermath of the plague, as Athens tried to reassert herself, Cleon’s rhetoric became more violent, crude, and aggressive, as he attacked his critics rather than refuting them, but most often he carried the Assembly with him. Soon, this kind of outlandish behavior became normalized, and the political climate at Athens degenerated into partisan bickering. Genuine statesmen gave way to demagogues, who stoked the fear and anger of the citizens and pandered to their greed and other vices.

The change became evident the year after Pericles’s death, when Mytilene, the major city of the island of Lesbos, was discovered to have plotted a revolt against Athens, with aid from Sparta. Mytilene was one of the few members of the Delian League who avoided paying tribute to Athens by providing the coalition with crewed ships. In response to the revolt, the Athenians sent a fleet to blockade the city, while troops laid siege by land. When Spartan ships finally reached the northern Aegean, nine months into the campaign, Mytilene had already fallen. The Athenian Assembly was divided about what to do with the captives, presumably numbering tens of thousands. Cleon fumed that a show of strength was required: these foreigners are a threat to our state, he said, and they must be crushed. He moved that the entire male population of Mytilene should be put to death, and the women and children enslaved. The demagogue whipped up such outrage and lust for revenge among his fellow Athenians that they voted to send a trireme with orders for the troops surrounding Mytilene to carry out a massacre.

After reflecting on the decree overnight, however, many Athenians regretted the cruelty of the decision that Cleon had convinced them to make. They insisted on reconvening the Assembly. Cleon mounted the rostrum again and gave a speech that became infamous. The days of Pericles, in which sober debates about justice were the norm, were gone. Cleon launched into a shameless diatribe against the moderates who opposed him and, despite his own reputation for corruption, accused them of taking bribes. Yelling loudly above the opposing voices, he raged against the Mytileans, invoking every prejudice to blacken their name. An example must be made of their city, he boomed, warning other cities against contemplating revolt. The Athenians, he cried, were fooling themselves if they believed the Periclean myth that their empire was a civilized alliance of friends, held together by justice and diplomacy. They should realize it was pure despotism and their subjects were slaves, who must be forced into submission by punishing them until they learn to fear their masters. He induced terror in the assemblymen, stoking their fear of losing control and then working that fear up into anger and a lust for revenge. If Athens didn’t have the strength to punish her enemies, he said, they would punish her. Teach them, he roared, that the penalty for rebellion is death!

After Cleon finally stepped down from the rostrum, the son of one of Pericles’s former advisers, a moderate, stepped forward and called for reason. The two things most opposed to good counsel, he said, were haste and anger. The Assembly should give themselves time for sober debate. Cleon, he said, was fearmongering and manipulating the vote by attacking the character of anyone who disagreed with him rather than answering their objections. There was no logic to his strategy. The punishment he had demanded was so extreme that it would blacken the reputation of Athens for many years to come. Support for democracy among the lower classes in other cities, he said, was their greatest political asset. By punishing not only the powerful but the entire population, Athens risked losing its moral authority, which was the glue that held its fragile empire together.

The Assembly voted, by a hair’s breadth, to change its decree. A second trireme raced through the night to catch the first ship, which had left a day earlier. Miraculously, it arrived just in time to avert a genocide. Cleon’s opponents would later accuse him of using the threat of a massacre to extort money, for his own pockets, from the residents of Mytilene.

Cleon had stood before the Athenian Assembly and castigated the democracy itself for being incapable of governing an empire. He complained that the debates permitted by the Assembly led to delay and indecision. The Assembly was too easily swayed by rhetoric and changed its mind too easily, he said. Weak laws, he argued, which are subject to change, were worse than bad ones applied consistently. During a war, he claimed, the Athenians needed a strong leader like him, to save them from the chaos caused by indecision. Of course, by accusing his political opponents of corruption and escalating conflicts with other states, he could make this need appear more urgent.

It should have been obvious that Cleon was doing the very thing he accused his enemies of doing: manipulating the debate, through appeals to emotion rather than reason. Like many authoritarians, he managed to combine demagoguery and antidemocratic rhetoric. Socrates watched from a distance, observing how easily Cleon was able to conceal his own corruption by accusing his critics of corruption, undermining the democratic process, while posing as a champion of the people and promising to be their savior. Democracy worked if the people behaved rationally, but once they fell completely under the spell of a demagogue, rule by the people became a form of tyranny in disguise.

I wrote this article a few years ago in response to a number of posts, emails, etc., from people who thought Jordan Peterson’s writings resembled Stoicism. It seemed to me that the underlying message was very different. As I’m particularly interested in the psychology of anger, I wanted to explore what Peterson had to say on this subject, which I also found especially relevant because it struck me that a surprising amount of anger surrounded his work.

In a sense, it’s surprising that anyone would link Peterson and Stoicism because, as far as I’m aware, Peterson has never mentioned Stoicism and there’s no hint in his talks or writings that he’s actually read the Stoics. Despite this, some people clearly feel that they’re saying similar things. Then again, there appear to be just as many, if not more, people who have concluded that Peterson’s writings are fundamentally at odds with what Stoicism teaches. One of them is, Massimo Pigliucci, author of How to be a Stoic, who recently wrote an article called simply Nope, Jordan Peterson Ain’t No Stoic.

My personal area of specialism is the relationship between ancient Stoic philosophy and modern evidence-based psychotherapy. (I’m the author of six books on philosophy and psychotherapy, the latest being How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, about the Stoic philosophy of Marcus Aurelius.) Peterson is a professor of clinical psychology; I’m a cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist. So we come, as it happens, from virtually the same professional field. I think it would be impossible to provide a comprehensive overview of Peterson’s writings from a Stoic perspective because there would, frankly, be far too much to address in a single article. Instead, I’m going to focus specifically on the topic of anger.

Why Anger?

Anger is the emotion with which the ancient Stoics were most concerned. We have an entire book titled On Anger from the philosopher Seneca, which survives today. The Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius discusses anger so frequently throughout The Meditations that we might even say it’s one of the main themes of that book. Throughout the centuries, overcoming anger has been one of the main emotional challenges for people interested in self-improvement. Today, it’s a topic of central importance to research in the fields of clinical psychology and psychotherapy. Peterson says a number of interesting things about anger. His writings also happen to contain many examples of angry thoughts and feelings, which are worth evaluating from a Stoic perspective.

I think it’s self-evident that Peterson’s views and behaviour have become highly divisive. Although critics view him as an apologist for certain aspects of right-wing political extremism, such as Islamophobia, he has at times distanced himself from the alt-right, claiming to be a “classic British liberal”. Nevertheless, he often seems to deliberately court controversy. Earlier this year, for instance, he had a fellowship from the University of Cambridge rescinded because he posed for a photograph beside a man wearing an “I’m a proud Islamophobe” t-shirt, seemingly alluding to Peterson’s criticisms of the word. Peterson often uses provocative or quite emotive rhetoric in his talks and writings, which I’ll contrast with the Stoic philosophy of language below.

Most of the online discussions about Peterson I’ve witnessed tended to rapidly degenerate into mud slinging and name calling, etc., from both sides: fans and critics alike. Something about him, perhaps his provocative style, seems to evoke intense anger, which is bound to destroy the atmosphere required for rational philosophical debate. That’s my other reason for discussing this emotion: perhaps explicitly focusing on it will help provide an antidote to the anger that often spoils these discussions. Maybe if we’re talking about the pros and cons of anger, it will remind us to avoid letting anger get in the way.

Peterson on Anger

Peterson’s writings contain much that is obscure. However, he lays out his self-help advice on anger concisely enough in book one of 12 Rules for Life.

Psychological forces are never unidimensional in their value, however, and the truly appalling potential of anger and aggression to produce cruelty and mayhem are balanced by the ability of those primordial forces to push back against oppression, speak truth, and motivate resolute movement forward in times of strife, uncertainty and danger.

Peterson’s book subtitled “an antidote to chaos”, implies that anger is typically unhelpful and cruel when it’s chaotic (mayhem). However, he also says that there’s an orderly and righteous form of anger that can help motivate us to fight oppression, assert the truth, and face danger. This is actually a very old notion, which was mainly associated in the past with Aristotle’s philosophy. Anger that’s moderate, having been mastered and placed in the service of reason, is potentially a good thing. As we’ll see, the Stoics gave reasons for rejecting this whole idea.

Peterson believes that violent aggressive tendencies (“seeds of evil and monstrosity”) are an innate part of human nature. In fact, he says the weak acquire strength of character and self-respect precisely by awakening themselves to this realization.

When the wakening occurs — when once-naïve people recognize in themselves the seeds of evil and monstrosity, and see themselves as dangerous (at least potentially) their fear decreases. They develop more self-respect. Then, perhaps, they begin to resist oppression. They see that they have the ability to withstand, because they are terrible too. They see they can and must stand up, because they begin to understand how genuinely monstrous they will become, otherwise, feeding on their resentment, transforming it into the most destructive of wishes. To say it again: There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character. This is one of the most difficult lessons of life.

Whereas some people might say that we should get rid of our anger, in other words, Peterson suggests that it’s more important to harness our violent and destructive tendencies in the service of our major goals in life.

He says we need righteous anger, and even aggression, to protect ourselves as long as it’s “skillfully integrated” into our actions in an orderly manner.

With their capacity for aggression strait-jacketed within a too-narrow morality, those who are only or merely compassionate and self-sacrificing (and naïve and exploitable) cannot call forth the genuinely righteous and appropriately self-protective anger necessary to defend themselves.

He even claims that those who are capable of feeling righteous anger are, paradoxically, more likely to oppose tyranny and less likely to exhibit destructive or violent behaviour.

Peterson’s account of righteous anger seems to conflate feelings of anger with assertive speech and behaviour. He’s basically trying to argue (or rather he’s just assuming) that genuinely assertive behaviour has to be motivated by righteous feelings of anger. Psychologists have generally sought to avoid confusing these two things, though, since the heydey of assertiveness training in the 1970s. It’s possible to behave firmly, sternly, and even be forceful or aggressive, of course, without actually feeling much of the emotion called anger. Peterson doesn’t acknowledge this distinction. His assumption that assertive behaviour requires righteous anger might resonate with some individuals but it’s definitely not going to be everyone’s experience. It’s also not supported by any psychological evidence. Boxers and martial artists, for instance, may employ violent skills externally, with great success, while nevertheless feeling little or no anger internally.

Likewise, it’s easy to point to countless examples of people behaving confidently and assertively, even in the face of provocation, while remaining calm and without righteous anger. Sometimes people say that they feel certain anger is useful in particular situations. What they usually mean is that aggressive behaviour seems appropriate, again overlooking the fact that someone might speak or act “angrily”, just as actors do, without necessarily feeling angry emotions inside. Moreover, in many cases they’re also confusing anger or aggression with assertive behaviour and what they have in mind are situations where confident and assertive behaviour would be appropriate, which could be neither outwardly aggressive nor accompanied by angry feelings.

Throughout 12 Rules for Life, Peterson alludes to his own violent fantasies and feelings of anger. Sometimes these are on a cosmic scale…

Perhaps Man is something that should never have been. Perhaps the world should even be cleansed of all human presence, so that Being and consciousness could return to the innocent brutality of the animal. I believe that the person who claims never to have wished for such a thing has neither consulted his memory nor confronted his darkest fantasies.

Sometimes they’re generalizations about the burning resentment and feelings of revenge he and other men supposedly experience, by nature, whenever we’re spurned by a woman…

The first woman made the first man self-conscious and resentful. Then the first man blamed the woman. And then the first man blamed God. This is exactly how every spurned male feels, to this day. First, he feels small, in front of the potential object of his love, after she denigrates his reproductive suitability. Then he curses God for making her so bitchy, himself so useless (if he has any sense) and Being itself so deeply flawed. Then he turns to thoughts of revenge.

Sometimes they’re about specific incidents in his life… For example, in his chapter in parenting he describes a female psychologist whose toddler his family were looking after for a day. She said the child probably wouldn’t eat — because he’s fussy. Curiously, though, there’s no indication he was malnourished. Maybe she meant he snacks but won’t sit down for a proper meal. Perhaps he’s already eaten a lot before coming over and will eat again when he returns home. These details of the story remain unclear. Lots of normal kids are picky eaters — it’s usually just a phase. Peterson became extremely angry, though, and as he looks back on the mother collecting her child he fumes dramatically: “Then she departed, black, murderous heart unchanged, doomed child in hand.”

In the coda, Peterson wrote about his arguments with his wife:

On many occasions in our nearly thirty years of marriage my wife and I have had a disagreement — sometimes a deep disagreement. Our unity appeared to be broken, at some unknowably profound level, and we were not able to easily resolve the rupture by talking. We became trapped, instead, in emotional, angry and anxious argument. We agreed that when such circumstances arose we would separate, briefly: she to one room, me to another. This was often quite difficult, because it is hard to disengage in the heat of an argument, when anger generates the desire to defeat and win. But it seemed better than risking the consequences of a dispute that threatened to spiral out of control. Alone, trying to calm down, we would each ask ourselves the same single question: What had we each done to contribute to the situation we were arguing about? However small, however distant … we had each made some error. Then we would reunite, and share the results of our questioning: Here’s how I was wrong ….

What he doesn’t mention, though, is that not all couples argue like this. Some do, obviously, but others don’t. Many of his readers will be in relationships where they don’t frequently experience these intense “emotional, angry and anxious” arguments. If not they may notice that their own parents, or perhaps some of their friends who are with partners, don’t argue as much as Peterson describes. To state the obvious: his is not a universal experience.

Peterson suggests what looks at first like a constructive coping strategy: both parties in the argument try hard to identify what errors they’ve made and then share them with one another. (This sounds almost confessional, although he doesn’t use that word.) However, he warns readers that this only works, of course, if you’re really willing to admit a mistake and change. Strangely then he doesn’t point out that it presupposes the other person’s willingness to do the same. If your main strategy for resolving arguments is to admit mistakes to your partner but they refuse ever to do so then you’re potentially going to end up in a very submissive role, which could easily be used against you by a self-centred or narcissistic person. It’s very surprising that Peterson, of all people, would offer this as a coping strategy for resolving arguments without noting the (rather obvious) risk of it being exploited in this way.

Fans of Peterson often “appeal to authority” and say that he’s a “highly respected psychologist”. (Of course, quite often someone may be respected in one field while remaining unknown or being regarded as a crank in others.) He is, they say, basing what he says on rigorous scientific research and logical arguments. So it came as a surprise to me to read 12 Rules for Life and discover that, in reality, it’s largely based on Jungian psychoanalytic (“analytic psychology”) theories, originating in the early 20th century, before the advent of evidence-based practice in psychotherapy. Large tracts of the book contain what I can only describe as a sort of New Age Christian theology, e.g., his discussions of original sin, and so on. Believe it or not, it’s often these Jungian-inflected theological arguments that he appears to use to justify his conclusions. Indeed, little or no scientific evidence is actually cited by Peterson to support the majority of his claims. In particular, he doesn’t provide any psychological research to justify his main assertions about the psychology of anger. He makes no reference whatsoever to the cognitive theory of anger used in modern evidence-based psychotherapy. Often what Peterson says about emotion actually appears to be contradicted by modern research or clinical best practice.

When someone presents what they’re doing as scientific, and uses the jargon of science, but doesn’t actually provide scientific evidence capable of substantiating their claims we call that pseudoscience. It’s been made to look “scientific” but it isn’t scientific. In that sense, in all honesty, Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life is probably the most pseudoscientific self-improvement book that I’ve ever come across, and I’ve read many over the years.

The Stoics on Anger

So if that’s what Peterson says, what do the Stoics say? Well, for a start, the Stoics directly dispute the Aristotelian premise assumed by Peterson that anger can be used constructively and potentially motivates us to do good things. First of all, it’s very easy to demonstrate that anger isn’t actually necessary in this regard. Although people certainly do sometimes achieve positive things as a result of anger, it seems impossible to find examples of things that have only ever been done this way. Presumably righteous anger against the horrors of Nazism or Stalinism has at times motivated some individuals to take a stand against these forms of political tyranny. However, surely other people have done more or less the same things calmly, without having to draw substantially upon any feelings of anger. Individual boxers have perhaps won fights sometimes by allowing themselves to get angry. Surely, others have beaten them at times, though, while keeping a cool head.

That’s important because anger may be sufficient but not necessary to achieve good things, such as overthrowing a tyranny or winning a boxing match. In other words, there might be a better way of achieving the same result. Perhaps there’s always a better way of achieving the same result, without anger. People motivate themselves in lots of different ways, without having to draw upon anger. Moreover, if there were any disadvantages to anger that would tip the balance in favour of alternative ways of responding. Of course there are: anger, in several ways, dramatically impairs our capacity for clear reasoning.

By analogy, it’s certainly true that you can get energy by eating candy. However, you can also get energy from other sources, such as fruit or vegetables, which don’t have the health disadvantages. You might say that anger is an energy but nevertheless what if it’s one of our least healthy sources of energy or motivation? Candy sure gives you energy but it also rots your teeth. What if anger does motivate you but also rots your brain? Anger is a motivation but is it a healthy motivation?

Peterson appears to take for granted the Platonic view of anger as an emotion that’s separate and distinct from reason. The Stoics rejected this view and argued instead that anger wasn’t just a feeling but also a way of thinking about events. To be angry isn’t just to feel your blood pressure rise but it’s also to think something along the lines of “She’s done something really bad and deserves to be punished.” It’s usually also associated with the perceived threat of some injury whether physical or to our status, self-esteem, or other interests. Anger is therefore often the consequence, as the Stoics realized, of fear or perceived loss. Sometimes these fears can be realistic, however they’re very often imaginary — such as the person who talks as though all foreigners of a particular race or religion are potential terrorists threats. Anger, however, is often also grounded in petty misconceptions of this kind such as the belief that someone has deliberately insulted you when in reality they have not.

Stoicism was the original philosophical inspiration for modern cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy (CBT). Indeed, CBT shares with Stoicism the fundamental premise that our emotions are shaped by corresponding beliefs. Albert Ellis, one of the founders of CBT, used to explain this to students and clients by teaching them the famous quote from Epictetus: “It’s not things that upset us but our opinions about them.” The Stoics defined anger as “a desire to take revenge on someone who appears to have wronged you contrary to what is appropriate.” Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy, defined anger, similarly, as the belief that someone has committed an offense against you (i.e., wronged you) by deliberately attacking the domain of your interests.

That’s the basis of the “cognitive model of emotion” used both in psychological research and in modern evidence-based psychotherapy. However we define anger, the basic idea that it’s shaped by our thinking is crucial because thoughts can be true or false. Suppose I’m angry because I believe that you’ve insulted me in front of my superiors. What happens if I discover that I’m wrong and you didn’t actually do that? What happens if I discover that you actually praised me instead? My anger will probably abate.

Peterson was furious with the psychologist mentioned earlier, for instance, because he believes she has a “black, murderous heart”. What if he’s mistaken about that? What if he’s overstating her level of malice to himself? What if he’s overlooking mitigating factors such as the possibility that the child had already eaten or that he’s misinterpreted her comment about food? Even uncertainty about these sort of beliefs can reduce the emotion of anger. Discovering that our presuppositions are false can eliminate it entirely.

One of the main practices of Stoicism was the description of events using plain language, without strong value judgments or emotive rhetoric — just sticking to the facts. This concept was called phantasia kataleptike, sometimes translated as “Objective Representation” although it literally means an impression of events that retains a firm grip on reality. You could describe this as a sort of anti-rhetoric or counter-rhetoric — an attempt to remedy the distorted thinking and emotional disturbance caused by our use of emotive language. I think that considered from this perspective it’s surely quite obvious that Peterson’s style is directly in conflict with Stoicism. He makes extensive use of emotionally charged language and strong value judgments throughout his talks and writings, something the Stoics thought is bound to lead to arguments, evoke irrational emotions, and distort our thinking. Whereas Peterson says the psychologist had a “black, murderous heart”, the Stoics would have said “the woman said her child doesn’t need to be fed”, sticking to the objective facts without embellishing them, and left it at that. The Stoic use of language was self-consciously at odds with the use of rhetoric associated with the ancient Sophists, who employed language carefully designed to inflame passions, such as anger, in their audience. Peterson’s use of language, very clearly, has more in common with the emotive rhetoric of ancient Sophists than with the rational, philosophical method of Socrates and the Stoics.

For Stoics, a deeper problem with anger comes into focus when we examine the underlying beliefs philosophically. To become angry we have to believe that the offense against us is very serious, as Beck notes, or even, as Ellis would say, that it’s “awful” or “catastrophic”. However, the Stoics reject the idea that anything external can genuinely be that “bad for me”. What matters is the use we make of the experience. It’s irrational, or unphilosophical, to place so much importance on things beyond our direct control. So, in their eyes, we’re always mistaken when we become angry with other people or external events, insofar as we’re necessarily placing too much importance on things that aren’t inherently up to us. We should focus instead, they say, on improving our own character and the way we choose to respond.

For instance, suppose someone else witnessing the incident Peterson describes with the psychologist’s child believes that it appears bad but, unlike Peterson, they remain uncertain about some of the details, such as the precise intentions of the mother. Suppose they consider their own way of responding more important and rather than getting angry with the mother they instead have a feeling that would be better described as one of determination to clarify things, help the child, and perhaps educate the mother if necessary, combined with a philosophical acceptance that the outcome might not be entirely under their control. We might describe that as a more “philosophical’ attitude toward the whole situation — it would be more in line with Stoic wisdom than the anger Peterson describes.

Indeed, the Stoics rightly argued that “anger is temporary madness” and that it tends to distort our ability to reason. Peterson doesn’t mention this as a disadvantage when employing anger as a source of motivation. Anger makes us stupid by narrowing our scope of attention and introducing pronounced cognitive biases into our thinking. We can’t think clearly when angry. Angry people are particularly inept at rational problem-solving, ironically, the very skill most in demand in the face of a crisis. That’s why we often prefer it if our leaders can remain calm in the face of adversity — they’re less prone to make mistakes and place everyone else in danger if they remain level-headed.

Let’s recap what Peterson says in 12 Rules for Life then, with these remarks derived from Stoicism and cognitive therapy in mind.

The Stoics on Peterson

Peterson claims that the risks associated with anger and aggression “are balanced by the ability of those primordial forces to push back against oppression, speak truth, and motivate resolute movement forward in times of strife, uncertainty and danger.” However, the Stoics would basically object that anything anger can do reason can do better. Plenty of people throughout history have fought oppression, spoken truth, and faced danger, without relying upon feelings of anger to motivate them. Anger can certainly be used to help us in these situations but it impairs our ability to reason calmly thereby introducing problems that are frankly unnecessary because we can always achieve the same things without anger. Peterson’s argument here seems obviously unsound. Just because anger is one way of motivating behaviour it doesn’t mean it’s the best way of doing it, or even a good way in most cases.

Peterson himself claims life’s most important revelation in this regard is: “There is very little difference between the capacity for mayhem and destruction, integrated, and strength of character.” Strength of character, in other words, is sublimated anger — anger we’ve somehow learned to channel in a constructive direction. The Stoics, of course, were particularly interested in this question of what constitutes “strength of character”.

And when you do become angry, be ready to apply this thought, that to fly into a passion is not a sign of manliness, but rather, to be kind and gentle, for in so far as these qualities are more human, they are also more manly; and it is the man who possesses such virtues who has strength, nerve, and fortitude, and not one who is ill-humoured and discontented; for the nearer a man comes in his mind to impassibility [i.e., freedom from unhealthy passions like anger], the nearer he comes to strength, and as [over-indulgence in] grief is a mark of weakness, so is anger too, for those who yield to either have been wounded and have surrendered to the enemy. — Meditations, 11.18

For Stoics like Marcus Aurelius, therefore, strength of character isn’t about learning to accept and channel our anger in a positive direction. It’s about completely uprooting anger by transforming the faulty beliefs upon which it’s based and replacing them with a more rational and coherent set of values. For instance, suppose you’re angry with someone for insulting you. If you truly accept that anger does us more harm than the things we’re angry about then your anger will inevitably dissipate because it no longer makes sense. There’s no such thing as “righteous” anger. (Arguably, we should be particularly wary of individuals who’ve somehow persuaded themselves to think of their own anger as “righteous”.) Strength of character comes from recognizing the supreme value of character, and achieving what the Stoics called magnanimity, literally greatness of soul, by which they meant the ability to rise above external misfortunes and view them as relatively trivial in the grand scheme of things.

This concept is largely alien to Peterson’s thinking. For him, anger is natural and there’s nothing intrinsically questionable about the importance it places on external events, such as perceived insults. At least, he doesn’t question the value angry people assign to externals anywhere near as deeply or systematically as the Stoics do. Peterson advises us to cultivate the capacity for “righteous anger” and thereby integrate our chaotic primal emotions. The Stoics would think that’s just more of the same because whether anger is “righteous” or not, either way it’s still an inherently neurotic, demanding way of thinking that places more importance on events that merely befall us than upon our own character and way of responding to events.

Peterson makes it clear that he takes his own “dark fantasies” to be universal, i.e., he’s convinced you’re a liar if you’ve never wished that “the world should even be cleansed of all human presence”. Well, I’m sure he’d just say that I’m self-deceived, but in all honesty, I don’t recall ever having genuinely wished for the destruction of the entire human race, myself, my loved ones, and even my daughter included. I’ve no doubt many people have thoughts like that at times but it’s nonsense to assume, on the basis of no evidence, that everyone shares those sort of dark fantasies, as he calls them, and that they’re somehow common to everyone. They’re not.

That point is crucial for the following reason. Peterson has a recurring habit of observing angry feelings or violent fantasies of his own and confidently asserting that they’re universal. I think it’s clear that he does this precisely because he ignores or minimizes the role of cognition in shaping emotion. He wants to assume that these sort of violent tendencies are just human nature rather than being the product of specific attitudes, beliefs and values, which he and others happen to hold. That’s precisely what the ancient Stoics and modern cognitive therapists would draw attention to, though.

When people said to Albert Ellis “I know it seems irrational but this is just how I feel”, Ellis would say “no, it’s also how you think.” It’s your philosophy of life we’re talking about here. Peterson’s philosophy implicitly assumes that external events justify our anger, and our desire for revenge. The Stoics think that’s total madness. For instance, a great deal of Peterson’s most influential advice about relationships has to do with his assumption that women are capable of “making” men “self-conscious and resentful” by rejecting their sexual advances.

This is exactly how every spurned male feels, to this day. First, he feels small, in front of the potential object of his love, after she denigrates his reproductive suitability. Then he curses God for making her so bitchy, himself so useless (if he has any sense) and Being itself so deeply flawed. Then he turns to thoughts of revenge. How thoroughly contemptible (and how utterly understandable).

Again, notice that Peterson is claiming this is how everyone, himself included, feels to this day. We can take it that he’s being honest if he is indeed including himself in this, and surely many other men have similar feelings to these, but he’s wrong to assume he’s describing the common experience of all men — he’s clearly wrong about that. There’s no way that “every spurned man” feels small, curses God or Being as flawed, condemns himself as useless, and desires revenge.

As noted earlier, Peterson seems to interpret his own angry and resentful feelings toward women as universal precisely because he ignores the cognitive model of emotion and minimizes the role of cognition in determining our emotions. As we’ve seen, Ellis liked to quote the central psychological precept of Epictetus’ Stoicism, which we could now paraphrase as follows: “It’s not being spurned by a woman that makes you angry but rather your opinions about the experience.”

Surely it’s obvious, though, that many men are spurned by women without feeling the sort of violent vengeful emotions that Peterson claims are universal? Sometimes men are spurned by women and they just think “It’s not a big deal, there are plenty more fish in the sea.” Or they think “That’s her loss not mine.” Or they think “I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.” There are as many emotional reactions as there are ways of thinking about the experience and that’s a big deal because the real revelation is that we can identify, evaluate, and transform our underlying beliefs.

Peterson’s writings lead in the opposite direction, though, further into the darkness of a sort of primitive ignorance concerning the nature of our emotions. In his philosophy, presumably like cavemen, we unthinkingly accept our angry and violent tendencies as human nature without questioning the values on which they’re based. Only when we confuse our thoughts with reality and lose sight completely of their cognitive aspect can we say along with Peterson: “this is exactly how every spurned male feels, to this day… then he turns to thoughts of revenge.”

We’ve seen how Peterson described “emotional, angry and anxious” arguments with his wife where “anger generates the desire to defeat and win.” His solution was for both parties to separate, identify areas where they could acknowledge their own errors, and share them with one another, like a sort of confessional. I mentioned my surprise at this strategy because it’s obviously hit and miss by nature, depending as it does on the behaviour of the other party.

However, it also surprised me because most modern therapists would, like the Stoics before them, begin by pointing out that the anger and anxiety are cognitively mediated. Again, to paraphrase Epictetus, “It’s not your partner’s behaviour that makes you angry and anxious but rather your opinions about what happened.” Peterson doesn’t mention anything like that, though. Perhaps there’s no point becoming angry in the first place because when we do so we fall into the fundamental philosophical error of placing more value upon external events than upon the use we make of them.

[When becoming angry with others remind yourself] that it is not people’s actions that trouble us (for those are a matter for their own faculty of judgement) but the opinions that we form about those actions. So eliminate your judgement that this or that is of harm to you, make up your mind to discard that opinion, and your anger will be at an end. — Meditations, 11.18

Marcus, of course, makes it sound easier than it is in practice. It’s good advice, though, and very consistent with the best research and evidence based practice in modern psychotherapy. Nevertheless, it’s virtually the opposite of the way Peterson talks about anger.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, Peterson’s idea is that anger is natural and inevitable. He wants to claim, for instance, that men inevitably feel enraged and want revenge when women reject them. Peterson has a lot more to say about relationships based on this, which we haven’t gone into here because the premise itself seems demonstrably false. Peterson is one of those people who believe that they know the minds of others better than they know themselves and he’s emphatic that even if you disagree with his interpretation of your motives, he’s right and you’re wrong — he’s the expert and you’re deluded. For instance, he thinks you all believe in God (Peterson’s concept of God, of course) whether you consciously admit it or not:

You might object, “But I’m an atheist.” No, you’re not… You are too complex to understand yourself.

That’s a remarkably dogmatic position for someone in clinical practice to adopt, to be honest — a context in which vulnerable clients are notoriously susceptible to pressure to agree with their therapist’s professed expert wisdom. Peterson consistently shows an unusual degree of confidence regarding his own insights into other people’s feelings. However, he also sometimes displays what I can only describe as a surprisingly grandiose vision of his own importance. For example, at the start of 12 Rules he explains how some of his major insights derive from a dream he had of himself suspended christ-like from a crucifix that forms the roof of a cosmic cathedral:

I dreamt one night during this period that I was suspended in mid-air, clinging to a chandelier, many storeys above the ground, directly under the dome of a massive cathedral. The people on the floor below were distant and tiny. There was a great expanse between me and any wall — and even the peak of the dome itself. […] I knew that cathedrals were constructed in the shape of a cross, and that the point under the dome was the centre of the cross. I knew that the cross was simultaneously, the point of greatest suffering, the point of death and transformation, and the symbolic centre of the world.

Some people are drawn to this sort of narcissism like moths to a flame. They like to be told what they’re thinking by someone who claims to be smarter than them. However, it’s difficult to know what to make of all this. Maybe Peterson is just trolling us about religion when he claims to know better than his readers do whether or not they believe in God. When writing of anger, though, he also appears to want to tell people exactly what they feel. They must, he thinks, be harbouring intense rage deep down about fairly common things — such as being turned down by a woman — whether they’re actually conscious of having such feelings or not. Of course, Peterson might be completely wrong about that — he says nothing to justify these sort of claims.

I should mention that in his introduction to 12 Rules for Life Peterson says “I wrote a list of rules, or maxims; some dead serious, some tongue-in-cheek”, speaking of his post on Quora on which the book was based. So by his own admission, some of what he’s saying is “tongue in cheek” — and designed, as he explains, to get maximum attention by provoking a reaction on social media. The contents of 12 Rules for Life, therefore, including his remarks about anger, are perhaps not meant to be taken seriously. Nevertheless, in my experience many of his supporters take his words extremely literally and assume that he’s being totally serious throughout.

Anyway, in contrast to Peterson, the Stoics and cognitive therapists argue that anger, like other emotions, is cognitively mediated. In other words, it’s not just how we feel it’s also how we think. Anger is an attitude, the product of our beliefs and values. That means it’s not inevitable that things like rejection should “make” us angry. Indeed, it should be obvious that people who experience the same setbacks in life often experience very different emotions.

To take responsibility for our emotions and desires the very first step is to be willing to accept that they do not necessarily reflect universal human nature. The next step is to identify the underlying beliefs that shape our feelings and critically evaluate them, which is what Stoicism tries to do on a grand scale, something that leads in a very different direction from Peterson’s philosophy.