Category: Philosophy

Did Stoic Philosophers go to War?

Did Stoic Philosophers go to War?

When I first became involved in teaching Stoicism, about 25 years ago now, I noticed that the audience at talks and conferences were quite a mixed bunch. At first I encountered mainly classicists and academic philosophers. Then more psychotherapists like myself, and some research psychologists, became interested in Stoic philosophy. Over time, I began to notice quite a few life coaches and individuals involved in corporate training, some sports coaches, and also a number of men and women who were serving in the military.

Each of these groups approaches Stoicism from a different perspective. However, the wonderful thing is that they will all happily sit around and discuss philosophy because they have enough common ground, a shared interest in Stoic literature and ideas. There are also some prominent figures in the modern Stoic community who approach the philosophy from a military perspective.

Modern Stoicism

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Jarrett spoke recently at the Stoicon Modern Stoicism conference in Athens about the Warrior Resilience Training Program he developed, based on Stoicism, and taught to US troops during the Iraq War. Nancy Sherman, who is currently Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University held the Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the United States Naval Academy, from 1997 to 1999. She’s the author of Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind (2007).

Mattis told them that he thinks the one book every American should read is The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

Former US Secretary of Defence, General James Mattis has stated that he is a fan of Stoicism. While in office, Mattis explained to an audience of military cadets that the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, though a philosopher, spent much of his reign far from home, fighting the northern tribes along the Danube. Mattis told them that he thinks the one book every American should read is The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. “In combat”, he said, “the reason I kept a tattered copy in my rucksack to pull out at times was it allowed me to look at things with a little distance.”

However, the most obvious of a Stoic in the modern military is arguably Vice Admiral James Stockdale, author of Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot (1995). Stockdale’s plane was shot down forcing him to eject over North Vietnam at the start of the Vietnam War. He was captured, beaten, and taken to the prison camp known as the Hanoi Hilton, where he was repeatedly tortured over the space of seven years, four of which were spent in solitary confinement. Stockdale had read the Stoic Epictetus years earlier and during his imprisonment he found Stoic philosophy invaluable as a way of coping with the extreme situation he faced. When the war ended, he was released and would lecture on Stoic philosophy and its value to the military.

From Socrates to the Stoics

Despite this interest in Stoicism among the modern military, the personnel I meet are often surprised to learn that some of their favourite philosophers also served in, or commanded, ancient armies. It’s an interesting aspect of the history of philosophy that’s often overlooked.

I thought it was about time that I put brought of these stories together in an article. We’ll begin by discussing Socrates’ military career, and that of his immediate circle, because he was the most important precursor of the Stoic school. His followers, the “Socratics”, especially Antisthenes and Xenophon, provide an important link between his original philosophy and the Stoic school. We’ll then look at the original Stoics, the early Greek school, which was linked to the intellectual circle at the court of King Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedonia, the most powerful military ruler of the period.

Then come a number of famous Stoics during the time of the Roman Republic, from the general Scipio Africanus the Younger, who conquered Carthage, to Cato of Utica, who led the shattered remnants of the Republican army in their doomed last stand against Julius Caesar in the Civil War. Finally, we can look at the Roman Imperial period from the first Roman emperor, Augustus, who studied Stoicism, down to the last famous Stoic of the ancient world, the emperor Marcus Aurelius.

People are often surprised to learn that Socrates was, in fact, also a decorated military hero…

Socrates (Classical Athens)

Most people think of Socrates (470–399 BC) as a bearded but balding, pot bellied, old philosopher. People are often surprised to learn that Socrates was, in fact, also a decorated military hero, renowned among other army veterans for his courage on the battlefield, and for his extraordinary endurance and self-discipline. He served as an Athenian hoplite, or armored infantryman, and distinguished himself in several important battles during the Peloponnesian war (431–404 BC), in which Athens and its allies fought the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta.

References to Socrates’ military service are scattered through a number of ancient texts, from which we learn that he took part in at least three major battles. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates himself cites his service as a hoplite in the Athenian army during the extended siege of Potidaea (432 BC), the Athenian assault on Delium (424 BC) and the expedition to defend the Athenian colony of Amphipolis (422 BC). Socrates was an older soldier, aged between 38 and 48, when these particular battles took place.

[Socrates] was the first to go out as a soldier, when it was necessary, and in war he exposed himself to danger most unsparingly. — Epictetus, Discourses, 4.1

In Plato’s Laches, the eponymous general is portrayed as describing an eyewitness account of Socrates’ exceptional service in the Battle of Delium. In Plato’s Symposium, Alcibiades likewise describes witnessing Socrates’ courage in the battles of Potidaea and Delium. We have a brief mention of Socrates’ service from Xenophon but also a longer portrayal of Socrates discussing military training and tactics, in a manner indicative of his past experience. It’s clear from the surviving writings that Socrates was famous among Athenians for his military endurance, self-discipline, and courage on the battlefield. He is also portrayed as an experienced veteran, whose opinions on military matters are valued by his younger followers.

During the Battle of Potidaea, Socrates single-handedly rescued his friend, the young noble Alcibiades, who had been wounded and disarmed by the enemy. Socrates was awarded the “prize of pre-eminent valour”, which he declined in preference that it should belong to Alcibiades. Plutarch says this award consisted of armor and a crown — it would perhaps be the Athenian equivalent of a US silver star medal. (According to some accounts, though, Socrates was overlooked by the generals in favour of Alcibiades.) Alcibiades was later (c. 416 BC) elected to the rank of Athenian general.

Eight years later, Delium was the first full-scale hoplite battle of the Peloponnesian War, and one of the bloodiest. The Athenians, had attempted unsuccessfully to establish stronghold within enemy territory. Thrown into disarray by the sudden attack of a superior force of Thebans, they made their retreat while being harried by the enemy. The Athenian general Laches had been unhorsed and we’re told Socrates walked by his side, protecting him, so confidently, that none of the enemy dared attack. Plato describes Alcibiades’ account of the story:

I had an even finer opportunity to observe Socrates there [at Delium] than I had had at Potidaea, for I was less in fear because I was on horseback. First of all, how much more sensible he was than Laches; and secondly, it was my opinion… that walking there just as he does here in Athens, ‘stalking like a pelican, his eyes darting from side to side,’ quietly on the lookout for friends and foes, he made it plain to everyone even at a great distance that if one touches this real man, he will defend himself vigorously. Consequently, he went away safely, both he and his comrade; for when you behave in war as he did, then they just about do not even touch you; instead they pursue those who turn in headlong flight. — Symposium

Socrates was a military veteran, approximately 48 years old, with a well-known reputation for his exceptional endurance and courage when the Battle of Amphipolis took place. Diogenes Laertius sounds impressed that he was hardy enough to take to the field once again as a hoplite, despite his age.

He took care to exercise his body and kept in good condition. At all events he served on the expedition to Amphipolis. — Lives and Opinions

Again, the Athenians were defeated. However, we know nothing about Socrates’ role in the battle.

Antisthenes and Xenophon

Socrates’ most famous student was Plato, but he was also one of the younger members of his circle. Plato’s school, the Academy, flourished for centuries. However, there were reputedly ten different Socratic schools that appeared in Greece after Socrates’ death. A small group followed one of Socrates’ oldest and most austere students, Antisthenes, who had fought bravely in the Battle of Tanagra (426 BC), during the Peloponnesian War. We don’t know if he and Socrates ever served together, although it’s possible. Antisthenes is usually credited either with founding the Cynic school or at least inspiring Diogenes of Sinope and his followers and in that regard he can be seen as a precursor of the Stoics. Antisthenes lived in poverty and was looked down on by Athenians because his mother was a foreigner, a “barbarian”, from Thrace.

However, another one of Socrates’ favourite students, a young noble called Xenophon, whose writings survive today, makes it clear that Socrates held Antisthenes in particularly high regard. Xenophon himself later rose to the rank of general and as well as being the author of several Socratic dialogues, including the Memorabilia of Socrates, he is also well-known today as the author of the Anabasis, which tells the story of his military exploits in Persia. Xenophon’s dialogues portray Socrates discussing military training, strategy and tactics, with a level of knowledge that would more commonly be associated with the officer class. Indeed, in the Laches, Plato also portrays Socrates being consulted by two generals seeking his advice about whether or not their sons should undergo specialist training to fight in heavy armour. (It’s not made explicit but I think the question bothering them is whether this style of hand-to-hand fighting, for an officer, is courageous or simply reckless.)

Overall, Xenophon’s dialogues portray Socrates in a more down-to-earth manner than Plato’s, and they place greater emphasis on his strength of character and self-discipline. The Stoics were perhaps more influenced by that version of Socrates. We’re told, for instance, by Diogenes Laertius, that it was reading the second book of Xenophon’s Memorabilia that inspired Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, to become a philosopher. Indeed, Socrates, Antisthenes, and Xenophon, all of whom were known for their military service, would influence the later Stoic tradition.

Antigonus and his Circle (Hellenistic Athens)

The founder of Stoicism, Zeno, did not serve in the military as far as we know. However, his student, King Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedonia, was one of the most important military commanders of the period. He was a member of the Antigonid dynasty, descended from the successors of Alexander the Great. About seven years after the Stoic school was founded, in 294 BC, Athens was conquered by Demetrius I, Antigonus’ father, who also seized the throne of Macedonia, and went on to conquer most of Greece. Over the following years, Macedonia and much of the Greek territory was lost to rival rulers, and Demetrius died in 283 BC. However, in 277 BC, at the Battle of Lysimachia, Antigonus reconquered Macedonia and claimed the throne.

Antigonus was involved in many battles, with mixed success, but he did have a positive reputation for cultivating the arts. He attracted a circle of philosophers, mainly of the Megarian and Cynic schools, both important influences upon Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, whose follower Antigonus eventually became.

Antigonus also favoured him [Zeno], and whenever he came to Athens would hear him lecture and often invited him to come to his court. — Diogenes Laertius

Zeno was too elderly and frail by this point to travel from Athens to Pella, the capital of Macedonia. Instead he sent two of his favourite students, Persaeus and Philonides the Theban, and thus the Stoics became courtiers to Antigonus. When Zeno died, around 262 BC, Antigonus mourned him, saying that he had lost his favourite audience now the philosopher was gone. Antigonus then became a patron of the Stoic school, under its new head, Cleanthes, donating three thousand drachmas. As a very rough benchmark, a craftsman or a soldier in this period might earn on average about one drachma per day. So this is a huge sum of money, perhaps equivalent to half a million dollars today.

After Antigonus captured Corinth around 244 BC, he appointed Persaeus as Archon of the city. Persaeus died in 243 BC defending the city against an attack led by Aratus of Sicyon, the commander of the Achaean League. About a decade or so later, another of Zeno’s favourite students, Sphaerus, went to Sparta and became courtier to one of the two Spartan kings, Cleomenes III. He accompanied the king into exile in Egypt after Sparta was also defeated by Aratus of Sicyon n the Battle of Sellasia in 222 BC.

So although Zeno himself doesn’t appear to have been a soldier, one of his most famous students, Antigonus, was very prominent military leader of the period, and Stoics went to serve as advisors to King Antigonus and later to King Cleomenes, who was also engaged in war against the Achaean League.

The Scipionic Circle (Roman Republic)

After Zeno, as we’ve seen, Cleanthes became the head (“scholarch”) of the Stoic school, followed by Chrysippus, its most prolific author and greatest intellectual. They were followed by a series of scholarchs, one of the last being Diogenes of Babylon who, along with two other philosophers, took part in an embassy to the Roman Republic in 155 BC. Stoic philosophy appears to have naturally appealed to the Romans and it gradually became popular among their elite.

In particular, the Roman statesman and general Scipio Aemilianus (185–129 BC), also known as Scipio Africanus the Younger, became a student of the last scholarch of the Athenian Stoic school, Panaetius of Rhodes. Like Antigonus before him, Scipio surrounded himself with a circle of cultured intellectuals, including several other Stoics.

Scipio was one of the Republic’s most accomplished generals and lead Rome to victory over her great rival, Carthage, in the Third Punic War, ending in 146 BC with the total destruction of the city. Seneca lists Laelius the Wise, Scipio’s closest friend, and another student of Panaetius, as one of the philosophers he most admires, and Cicero would later portray Laelius discussing Stoic-sounding ideas in On Friendship. Moreover, in what was once one of the most celebrated passages in his writings, known as The Dream of Scipio, Cicero portrays Scipio Africanus experiencing a mystical vision, which the modern-day French scholar Pierre Hadot considered a striking example of the contemplative exercise he called “The View from Above.”

After Athens was sacked by the Roman dictator Sulla, in 86 BC, the Stoic school appears to have fragmented. It split into three branches according to one ancient author, Athenaeus, and the focus of its activity permanently shifts from Athens to Rome.

The next famous example of a Stoic who served in the military would be Cato the Younger, the notoriously stern political opponent of Julius Caesar. In 72 BC, Cato served in the Third Servile War, against the slave uprising started by Spartacus. Five years later, at the age of 28, he was then appointed military tribune, and given command of a legion in Macedonia. Cato was adored by the legionaries because his tough and highly-disciplined personal lifestyle was combined with humility. He dug trenches and built walls, ate military rations alongside his men, and shared their sleeping quarters. Whereas officers normally ride on horseback, Cato reputedly marched on foot alongside the legionaries under his command.

Cato fiercely opposed the rise to power of Julius Caesar, constantly warning that Caesar planned to make himself a tyrant over Rome, something the people greatly feared. In the end, when Caesar crossed the Rubicon river invading Rome, Cato was proven right. At first, during the Civil War, Cato refused to take sides, because he considered Pompey the Great, the general put in charge of the Republican army by the Senate, to be as much of a threat as Caesar.

However, after Pompey’s defeat, and death by poisoning, alongside Metellus Scipio, a relative of Scipio Amelianus, Cato took command of the shattered remnants of the Republican army in order to make a final stand at the fortified city of Utica in North Africa. Cato reputedly knew he couldn’t hope to win but rallied the troops to oppose Caesar and defend the freedom of the Republic as a matter of honour. However, Metellus Scipio’s army was slaughtered at the Battle of Thapsus in 46 BC. This effectively ended the Roman Republic, which Caesar now replaced with a dictatorship. Cato took his own life rather than be captured and used by Caesar for bargaining or propaganda.

Cato became a hero to generations of Romans, and to Stoics in particular. A century after his death, Seneca’s nephew, the Stoic poet Lucan, wrote an epic poem about the Civil War called The Pharsalia, in which Cato is portrayed, for want of a better word, as virtually a Stoic superhero. Indeed, in the 18th century, the playwright Joseph Addison’s Cato, a Tragedy, became very popular with the Founding Fathers of the United States. Benjamin Franklin quoted it in a letter and George Washington allegedly had the play performed for his army at Valley Forge.

Roman generals were typically granted a cognomen, an extra name, denoting the location of major military victory, such as the title Africanus (Scipio “of Africa”) given to Scipio Aemelianus after his conquest of Carthage in the region the Romans called Africa. However, as far as I’m aware, Cato is the only Roman commander to be granted a cognomen following a military defeat. He was given the title Uticensis (Cato of Utica) because he was perceived as having won a sort of lasting moral victory, which reverberated throughout Rome, despite giving his life and being defeated in the Civil War by Caesar.

One of the most memorable lines in Addison’s play relates to this and was quoted by George Washington to general Benedict Arnold:

It is not in the power of any man to command success; but you have done more — you have deserved it.

For Stoics, honour, or virtue, is more important than victory.

Augustus (Roman Empire)

Amid growing anxiety that he was planning to make himself not only dictator for life but King of Rome, Caesar was, of course, assassinated on the Ides of March, 44 BC. One of the lead assassins was Brutus, the nephew of Cato, and reputedly another Stoic, who had fought against Caesar, under Pompey in the Civil War.

Caesar’s death was followed by a prolonged period of civil war and political upheaval, during which several factions vied for control of the Republic. This came to a conclusion in 31 BC with the naval battle of Actium in which Octavian, Caesar’s adopted nephew, defeated the army of Mark Antony and his lover Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt.

Sick of the conflict, the Romans were happy to grant Octavian more and more powers, in exchange for political stability, until he was eventually named Augustus and Princeps in 27 BC, effectively becoming the first Roman emperor. He went on to become one of Rome’s most militarily successful commanders, or imperatores.

At the start of his career, Octavian was known for his violent temper and reprisals against his political opponents. However, from his youth, Augustus had two well-known Stoic tutors, named Athenodorus Canaanites and Arius Didymus, who reputedly taught him to manage his temper.

The late Emperor Augustus also did and said many memorable things, which prove that he was not under the dominion of anger. — Seneca, On Anger, 3.23

At least according to Seneca, Augustus became more even-tempered in his old age. He would often quote the advice of philosophers in letters to his friends and family and even wrote a (sadly lost) book titled Exhortations to Philosophy. He also perhaps set the precedent for future generations of Roman nobles, in the imperial age, to study Stoic philosophy. This, of course, culminated, in the last famous Stoic of the ancient world: the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Marcus Aurelius

Unusually for a Roman noble of his station, Marcus had no military training or experience whatsoever, unless we count a passing reference to him being trained as a youth to fight in armour, while at Rome. Instead, his adoptive father, Hadrian’s successor, the emperor Antoninus, had him focus on his education and a bureaucratic career in the administration of Rome. Marcus excelled in this role and was a studious workaholic, immersing himself in rhetoric, philosophy, and the law.

Under Antoninus, Rome enjoyed a period of remarkable peace, and his dying word Aequanimitas, became emblematic of his reign. However, as soon as Marcus took to throne that all changed. The empire’s “barbarian” enemies had clearly been plotting for years and the Parthian king Vologases IV took the opportunity to invade the Roman client-state of Armenia, and then the Roman province of Syria, instigating the Parthian War.

As soon as he was acclaimed emperor, Marcus asked the senate to appoint his adoptive brother, Lucius Verus, as co-emperor, the first time Rome had ever had joint rulers of this kind, although Lucius was clearly in the subordinate role. Marcus was suffering from chronic health problems by this time — mainly chest and stomach pains — and being obviously more frail he delegated Lucius to assume responsibility for the legions. At the outbreak of the war, it was therefore Lucius who was sent to the east to assume operational command. Unfortunately, he was a hopeless gambler and alcoholic, who depended on his generals to fight the war. After initial setbacks, which unduly lengthened the war perhaps, Rome began making progress. Five years later, they had soundly defeated the enemy whose capital Ctesiphon was sacked by a young general called Avidius Cassius, forcing the Parthian king to sue for peace.

Unfortunately, the returning legionaries brought back the Antonine Plague, probably a form of smallpox, which they spread all across the empire, as they returned to their garrisons. Some scholars estimate that up to five million people died as a result. A massive coalition of northern tribes along the Danube frontier, led by the Marcomanni, seized the opportunity to invade and plunder the Roman provinces. They made their way down the Amber Route, across the Alps, and right into northern Italy, where they besieged the wealthy Roman city of Aquileia, throwing the city of Rome itself into a panic. Marcus no longer trusted Lucius to take sole command so this time they both set out for The First Marcomannic War.

However, Lucius dropped dead suddenly, perhaps from the plague, leaving Marcus sole emperor. With no military training or experience whatsoever, in the middle of a devastating plague, he now took command of the largest army ever massed on a Roman frontier — numbering approximately 140,000 men, including the auxiliaries and naval units sailing on the Danube. At first, it seems Marcus was viewed by some of his general with derision, with Avidius Cassius reputedly calling him nothing but a “philosophical old woman”. However, after initial setbacks, the Romans gradually defeated one enemy tribe after another, securing the frontier. We can see that Marcus’ legions came to revere him because, among other things, they even attributed two famous battlefield miracles to him. About six years on, he was now a respected general, and the veteran legions under his command were fiercely loyal to him.

However, just as Marcus was about to conclude the northern campaign, word reached his camp that his own general Avidius Cassius, had declared himself emperor in the east, instigating a civil war. Marcus rapidly prepared his troops to march southeast and engage the rebel army in Syria. However, remarkably, according to the historian Cassius Dio, Marcus responded by giving a famous speech before the legions, in which he pardoned everyone involved in the uprising, before battle had even commenced. When word of this reached Cassius’ legions, perhaps after some initial setbacks, they concluded there was no more reason to fight. However, Cassius would not step down. Two of his own officers therefore ambushed him and beheaded him, abruptly bringing the civil war to an end before it had even begun.

Marcus therefore managed to conclude a civil war, which threatened to split the empire, with virtually no bloodshed. He was true to his word, and pardoned those involved, apart from a few individuals involved in serious crimes, who were punished leniently. Marcus even protected the wife and children of Avidius Cassius. However, after his death, all of this was reversed by Commodus, who, seeking revenge, had Cassius’ family hunted down and burned alive as traitors.

Arrian and Rusticus

In his youth, Marcus had been given a thorough education in Stoic philosophy. His main tutor, Junius Rusticus, was a Roman statesman, who had allegedly served in the military, alongside Arrian of Nicomedia, the military governor of the Roman of Cappadocia, who successfully defended his province against the invading Alans. Indeed, Arrian was a highly accomplished Roman general and statesman and general, favoured and repeatedly promoted by the emperor Hadrian.

In addition to being a Roman statesman and general, Arrian was a prolific author, who modelled himself on and was even nicknamed after Xenophon (remember him?). He wrote several books on military training, strategy, and tactics, including The order of battle against the Alans. However, you may recognize his name because his writings also include the Handbook and Discourses of Epictetus. Epictetus himself wrote nothing. The books we normally attribute to him were in fact transcribed and edited by his student, Arrian of Nicomedia, who apparently saw himself very much as the Xenophon to Epictetus’ Socrates.

A generation later, Marcus Aurelius wrote of Junius Rusticus that “it was through him that I came to know the Discourses of Epictetus, as he lent me a copy from his own library” (Meditations, 1.7). Why does Marcus think it’s so noteworthy that this book came from Rusticus’ personal library? It appears to be more precious than a copy. It’s therefore tempting to wonder whether Rusticus received it in person from Arrian, during their military service together.

In a curious passage, written centuries later, the Roman orator Themistius writes that Scipio Africanus and Augustus, only consulted Panaetius and Arius Didymus about private matters, and did not “drag them into the stadium’s dust” of politics.

But this was not the experience of our current emperor’s fathers and the founders of his line [Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius], whose names are great. They pulled Arrian [of Nicomedia] and [Junius] Rusticus away from their books, refusing to let them be mere pen-and-ink philosophers. They did not let them write about courage and stay at home, or compose legal treatises while avoiding the public domain that is law’s concern, or decide what form of government is best while abstaining from any participation in government. The emperors to whom I am now alluding consequently escorted these men to the general’s tent as well as to the speaker’s platform. In their role as Roman generals, these men passed through the Caspian Gates, drove the Alani out of Armenia, and established boundaries for the Iberians and the Albani. — Themistius, 34th Oration

In other words, despite being philosophers, Arrian and Rusticus were committed to public life and had highly-accomplished military careers.

Like I said, arguing that the ideas espoused by a person are bad because the person has a bad character is the ad hominem fallacy. It doesn’t follow, logically. Nothing you’ve said actually appears to be relevant to the content of the article, in other words. Nobody is trying to claim Jefferson was a good man. The article’s about his ideas in this specific letter, not his character in general.

That’s what we call the ad hominem fallacy, though. The idea that certain beliefs are false because one of the people holding them may have had a bad character. No matter how strongly we feel about Jefferson’s character, including his private life, it doesn’t actually make any difference to the value of the Stoic (or Epicurean) ideas he happened to have written about.

Ten Rules to Follow in Daily Life

Ten Rules to Follow in Daily Life

Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves… — Jefferson

I’m staying near Washington DC at the moment and took the opportunity to visit the Thomas Jefferson’s Library exhibit at the Library of Congress. I’m the author of several books on Stoicism, including How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. I know that Jefferson, like some of the other Founding Fathers, was well-read in classical philosophy, so I naturally wondered what he thought of Stoicism, the philosophy that most influences me.

However, it’s generally assumed that Jefferson was a follower of Epicurus’ philosophy because he owned several texts on the subject and, in 1819, wrote a letter to William Short stating: “I too am an Epicurean”. In the same letter, although he praises Seneca as a “fine moralist”, he also criticizes certain aspects of Stoicism. Nevertheless, there are obvious Stoic influences in Jefferson’s writings. Indeed, in the same letter he praises the Stoic Epictetus, stressing that he has “given us what is good of the Stoics”, and that he even wished to create a new translation of Epictetus’ works.

A year before he passed away, in 1825, Jefferson was asked by a father to provide advice for his young son. (Who was his namesake, incidentally: Thomas Jefferson Smith.) Jefferson’s letter to the boy concludes with a set of rules. Jefferson gave them the rather unwieldy title “A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life”. However, that just means: Ten Rules to Follow in Daily Life. As we’ll see, although Jefferson had written quite scathingly of Stoicism six years earlier, his advice to this young man contains ideas that appear more Stoic than Epicurean.

Jefferson’s Ten Rules for Daily Life

1. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.

2. Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

3. Never spend your money before you have it.

4. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

5. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.

6. We never repent of having eaten too little.

7. Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

8. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!

9. Take things always by their smooth handle.

10. When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

Jefferson and Stoicism

The phrase “take things by their smooth handle”, in particular, will be immediately recognized by any student of Stoic philosophy. It’s obviously a paraphrase from one of the books in Jefferson’s personal library: the Enchiridion or Handbook of the philosopher Epictetus.

Everything has two handles, the one by which it may be borne, the other by which it may not. — Enchiridion, 43

Julian P. Boyd the historian who edited his papers also arrived at the conclusion that Jefferson must have derived this rule from Epictetus. So what does it mean? Well, Epictetus continues:

If your brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold of the act by that handle wherein he acts unjustly, for this is the handle which cannot be borne: but lay hold of the other, that he is your brother, that he was nurtured with you, and you will lay hold of the thing by that handle by which it can be borne.

In other words, don’t think about other people’s actions by focusing on ideas such as “what he did was wrong” or “what he did was unjust”. Rather focus on ideas that help you to deal more constructively with the situation.

More generally, the Stoics would say that we should avoid making strong value judgements or using emotive language in a way that’s merely upsetting — that’s the “rough” or broken handle. Instead, we should learn to take a step back, suspend emotive value judgements of this kind, and view things as honestly and objectively as possible — that’s the “smooth” handle, the usable one, which leads to practical wisdom and rational problem-solving.

The Other Nine Rules

What about Jefferson’s other nine rules? Well, they don’t mention Stoicism as explicitly but they’re generally consistent with that philosophy. Moreover, several of them are very similar to other prominent aspects of ancient Stoic wisdom. Jefferson owned and had presumably read copies of The Discourses and Enchiridion of Epictetus as well as the writings of Stoics Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, and the works of Cicero who, though not a Stoic himself, wrote extensively and sympathetically about their philosophy.

“Never put off till tomorrow what you can do to-day.”

One of the major themes of Stoicism is the idea that we should bear in mind our own mortality, that life is fleeting. We must therefore pay more attention to our own actions in the here and now. Marcus Aurelius, for instance, criticizes himself for acting as though “you would rather become good tomorrow than be so today (Meditations, 8.22). Indeed one of his most quoted sayings is that “No more of all this talk about what a good man should be, but simply be one!” (Meditations, 10.16).

“Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.”

The Stoics frequently emphasize that we should take responsibility for our own lives. As Epictetus says:

Yes, but my nose runs. For what purpose then, slave, have you hands? Is it not that you may wipe your nose? — Discourses, 1.6

We should not wait for help from others but learn to be self-reliant and to take action where necessary.

“We never repent of having eaten too little.”

Stoicism evolved out of the austere Cynic philosophy, which preceded it. Like the Cynics, the Stoics were known for eating a simple diet and training themselves to control their appetite. For example, we’re told of the Stoic teacher Musonius Rufus:

He often talked in a very forceful manner about food, on the grounds that food was not an insignificant topic and that what one eats has significant consequences. In particular, he thought that mastering one’s appetites for food and drink was the beginning of and basis for self-control. — Lecture, 18

Stoics like Epictetus made the virtue of temperance, or moderation, the basis of their training. They believed that without self-control in basic matters such as our daily use of food and drink we inevitably lack the self-discipline required to exercise wisdom more generally in our lives.

“When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.”

The Stoics believed that anger was perhaps the most dangerous of the unhealthy passions. We have an entire book on the subject that survives today by Seneca called On Anger. In it he claims that the first Roman emperor, Augustus, who had trained in Stoicism, though known for violence earlier in life, learned to conquer his anger.

The late Emperor Augustus also did and said many memorable things, which prove that he was not under the dominion of anger. — On Anger, 3.23

Although Seneca doesn’t mention it in his book, we know from another source that Augustus’ Stoic tutor showed him basically the same technique that Jefferson describes in his rules:

Athenodorus, the philosopher, because of his advanced years begged to be dismissed and allowed to go home, and Augustus granted his request. But when Athenodorus, as he was taking leave of him, said, “Whenever you get angry, Caesar, do not say or do anything before repeating to yourself the twenty-four letters of the alphabet,” Augustus seized his hand and said, “I still have need of your presence here,” and detained him a whole year, saying, “No risk attends the reward that silence brings.” — Plutarch, Moralia, Sayings of Romans: Caesar Augustus

Conclusion

A couple of people have pointed out to me that in various letters, Jefferson would draw up recommended reading lists. These include the works of Cicero, texts dear to his heart which contain much Stoic influence, and also the Memorabilia of Socrates, dialogues which particularly influenced the Stoics. However, Jefferson also specifically recommends reading the Letters and Essays of Seneca, the Enchiridion of Epictetus, and The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius — all the major surviving Stoic texts in fact.

Jefferson did identify more with Epicureanism than with Stoicism, at least at one point in his life. However, he was evidently more interested in Stoicism and influenced by its teachings than is generally recognized. He studied all of the major surviving Stoic texts and encouraged others to do so also. More importantly, though, he found the Stoic teachings of Epictetus, in particular, valuable as a guide to living wisely, and continued to draw upon them in the advice he gave to others.

Was the Founding Father Influenced by Stoic Philosophy?

Was the Founding Father Influenced by Stoic Philosophy?

One man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business. — Ben Franklin

The great Benjamin Franklin has more in common with Stoic philosophers than most people realize. Franklin barely ever mentioned the Stoics. Nevertheless, as we’ll see, in his remarkable Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection, he drew inspiration from an ancient philosophical tradition, which also played an important role in Stoicism.

Franklin believed that the republic would flourish only if the freedoms secured by the U.S. Constitution were combined with wisdom and virtue. I think it’s fair to say that the Founding Fathers’ original emphasis on character, especially the virtues necessary for true leadership, has been largely sidelined from modern political discourse in the United States. However, Franklin took the challenge of improving his own character incredibly seriously.

In his Autobiography, he proclaimed that around 1728, in his early twenties, he “conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.” He reasoned that due to inattention and habit, it was impossible to develop good character without a certain amount of effort and self-discipline, applied in a systematic manner.

I concluded, at length, that the mere speculative conviction that it was our interest to be completely virtuous, was not sufficient to prevent our slipping; and that the contrary habits must be broken, and good ones acquired and established, before we can have any dependence on a steady, uniform rectitude of conduct.

“For this purpose”, he concludes, “I therefore contrived the following method”, and he proceeds to lay out his plan for attaining moral perfection.

The Golden Verses of Pythagoras

In his youth, Franklin had studied Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates and became obsessed with the Socratic method of questioning, somewhat to the annoyance of others. He soon realized, though, that it was much healthier to begin by applying the same scrutiny to his own character. He tells us that he was inspired to develop this practice of moral self-examination into a daily self-improvement routine based on an ancient poem called The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, which had been very influential in among the Hellenistic philosophers who followed Socrates.

Conceiving then, that, agreeably to the advice of Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, daily examination would be necessary, I contrived the following method for conducting that examination.

We’ll return to the details of Franklin’s method of self-examination below. However, the lines from the Golden Verses to which he’s referring were very famous in the ancient world and read as follows:

Never allow sleep to close your eyelids, after you went to bed, until you have examined all your actions of the day by your reason.

The Golden Verses then lists three questions meant to be posed during this routine of moral self-examination:

1. What have I done wrong?

2. What have I done well?

3. What have I omitted that I ought to have done?

The text continues:

If in this examination you find that you have done wrong, reprove yourself severely for it; and if you have done any good, rejoice. Practise thoroughly all these things; meditate on them well; you ought to love them with all your heart. It is those that will put you in the way of divine virtue.

The ancient Stoics were also greatly influenced by the same text and borrowed the same techniques from it. We don’t know when this started. The Golden Verses is hard to date. However, some scholars believe it may have been around even at the time when the Stoic school was founded.

The Stoic Practice

Zeno of Citium, the first Stoic, the founder of school, wrote a book known as Pythagorean Questions, of which nothing survives except the title. Likewise, the last famous Stoic of the ancient world, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, lists Pythagoras as one of the philosophers he most respects (Meditations, 6.47). Marcus is also intrigued by ancient Pythagorean contemplative practices:

The Pythagoreans used to say that, first thing in the morning, we should look up at the sky, to remind ourselves of beings who forever accomplish their work according to the same laws and in an unvarying fashion, and to remind ourselves too of their orderliness, purity, and nakedness; for nothing veils a star. — Meditations, 11.27

Zeno’s fascination with Pythagoreanism therefore appears to have continued throughout the entire history of the Stoic school, right down to the time of Marcus Aurelius, almost five centuries later. However, what’s even more interesting is the way that The Golden Verses of Pythagoras are used by Seneca and Epictetus, Marcus’ Stoic predecessors.

Epictetus quotes the lines from The Golden Verses we mentioned above: “Never allow sleep to close your eyelids…” He tells his students that they ought to memorize the advice they contain in such way that they can actually put it into practice rather than just reciting the words without paying attention to their meaning (Discourses, 3.10; quoted again briefly in 4.6).

Seneca likewise talks of the “ardent zeal” he felt for Pythagoras’ teachings as a young man. In his treatise, On Anger, he describes the practice of a Pythagorean philosopher called Sextius, which involved strengthening his character by examining his own mind on a daily basis. Each evening as he was about to retire to bed, Sextius would ask himself three questions:

1. What bad habit of your have you cured today?

2. What vice have you checked?

3. In what respect are you better?

Seneca says that he sleeps more deeply each night as a result of following the same practice. Also knowing he is going to review his own character and actions at the end of the day, he finds himself naturally more self-aware and less inclined to be swept away by passionate anger.

I make use of this privilege, and daily plead my cause before myself. When the lamp is taken out of my sight, and my wife, who knows my habit, has ceased to talk, I pass the whole day in review before myself, and repeat all that I have said and done. I conceal nothing from myself, and omit nothing.

Seneca is describing a process moral self-analysis resembling the cross-examination of a witness in a law-court. Indeed, that was the original analogy for the Socratic method of questioning, known as the elenchus. However, Seneca is also careful to explain that this must be done compassionately.

For why should I be afraid of any of my shortcomings, when it is in my power to say, “I pardon you this time: see that you never do that anymore? In that dispute you spoke too contentiously. Do not for the future argue with ignorant people. Those who have never been taught are unwilling to learn. You reprimanded that man with more freedom than you ought, and consequently you have offended him instead of amending his ways. In dealing with other cases of the kind, you should look carefully, not only to the truth of what you say, but also whether the person to whom you speak can bear to be told the truth.” — On Anger, 3.36

He adds: “A good man delights in receiving advice; all the worst men are the most impatient of guidance.”

Franklin’s Little Book

Like the Stoics, Franklin was inspired by these lines from The Golden Verses to begin following a daily regime of moral self-examination. He created a “little book” to track his progress, rather like the “self-monitoring” record sheets we use in cognitive-behavioural therapy today.

He says: “This my little book had for its motto these lines from Addison’s Cato”, quoting these words spoken by by Cato in the play:

Here will I hold. If there’s a power above us 
(And that there is, all nature cries aloud 
Thro’ all her works), 
He must delight in virtue; 
And that which he delights in must be happy.

Franklin immediately follows this with a Latin quote from Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, a book on Stoicism and the promise of philosophy:

O philosophy, guide of life! O searcher out of virtue and exterminator of vice! One day spent well and in accordance with thy precepts is worth an immortality of sin.

Franklin’s little book contained a table consisting of seven columns, one for each day of the week, and separate rows for each virtue. His plan was to focus on a different virtue each week. Every time he noticed himself failing to live up to the virtue he would put a black mark in the corresponding cell, trying thereby to develop greater self-awareness and minimize his failures.

The Stoics had a fourfold classification of the virtues, derived from Socrates, which later became famous among Christian authors as the four “cardinal virtues”: wisdom, justice, temperance, and fortitude. Franklin was a devoted Freemason and, alongside its admiration for Pythagoreanism, the symbolism of Freemasonry had assimilated the four cardinal virtues of Greek philosophy, symbolized by the four corners of each lodge.

Franklin’s Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection contains a more extensive list of virtues. He noted down this system of classification in his little book, attempting to express the essence of each in a short saying, as follows:

1. Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

2. Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

3. Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.

4. Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.

5. Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i. e., waste nothing.

6. Industry. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

7. Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly; and, if you speak, speak accordingly.

8. Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.

9. Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.

10. Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes, or habitation.

11. Tranquillity. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.

12. Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.

13. Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Franklin thought it would be logical to proceed by focusing on one virtue at a time, attempting to train himself to acquire the habit of acting in accord with it and thereby improving his own character over time. Interestingly, he concluded that it made sense to begin with temperance:

Temperance first, as it tends to procure that coolness and clearness of head, which is so necessary where constant vigilance was to be kept up, and guard maintained against the unremitting attraction of ancient habits, and the force of perpetual temptations.

Epictetus likewise taught his students that they should begin their training by focusing on the Stoic Discipline of Desire, which is to say the virtue of temperance, as this provides a solid foundation for everything else they must learn.

The next virtue Franklin sought to acquire was silence, because he says he desired to gain knowledge and observed that “in conversation it was obtain’d rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue”. That’s somewhat reminiscent of a saying of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, to the effect that we have two ears and one tongue because nature intended us to listen twice as much as we talk.

Franklin tracked his progress on the tables contained in his little book, as he tried to develop each of these thirteen virtues in turn. In doing so, he also asked himself two questions each day: one at the start of the morning and one at the end of the evening.

• Morning: “What good shall I do this day?”

• Evening: “What good have I done today?”

He would write down the answers in a few concise phrases, e.g., one evening he wrote of the good he’d achieved that day:

Put things in their places. Supper. Music or diversion, or conversation. Examination of the day.

Franklin followed this practice for years. He even wore out the pages in his notebook eventually and had to contrive a method for recording his progress on a re-usable tablet, which could be wiped clean each week with a sponge.

Conclusion

Franklin admitted this was a laborious process and that he made more progress in some areas than others. Nevertheless, it was worth doing.

But, on the whole, tho’ I never arrived at the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell far short of it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it…

He explains that the technique for cultivating virtues described in this chapter of his Autobiography was originally intended to form part of a larger book called The Art of Virtue. We’re told that he was unable to complete this “great and extensive project” because it was too ambitious in scope. However, his fundamental goal was actually to demonstrate a particular theory of virtue.

[…] that vicious actions are not hurtful because they are forbidden, but forbidden because they are hurtful, the nature of man alone considered; that it was, therefore, everyone’s interest to be virtuous who wish’d to be happy even in this world…

Now, that’s essentially the ancient doctrine that “virtue is its own reward”, which is typically associated with Socrates and particularly with the Stoics who came after and were influenced by him.

Do you ask what it is that I seek in virtue? Only herself. For she offers nothing better — she herself is her own reward. Or does this seem to you too small a thing? — Seneca, On the Happy Life, 9

Virtue is good because it is inherently beneficial, and constitutes our happiness, and not good just because it’s praised by others. Virtue ethics is central to Freemasonry. However, Franklin must also have inherited this moral doctrine, consciously or unconsciously, from his early study of Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates, and perhaps also from his exposure to Stoic ideas in the writings of Cicero.

As far as I can see, Franklin mentions Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius in passing, only briefly, and once quotes a Latin saying from Seneca, which can be translated as:

He whom the dawning day has seen exalted in his pride, the departing day has seen downfallen.

Nevertheless, he seems to have shared the Stoic conception of virtue as an end in itself. Like the Stoics he saw temperance, and self-discipline, as the foundation of a rigorous practice of moral self-examination, based on The Golden Verses of Pythagoras. Franklin’s Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection contains a method of cultivating specific virtues, by monitoring one’s daily progress in a little book, and thereby developing habits that would lead to improvements in one’s character.

Book Review of James Stockdale’s Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot

Book Review of Stockdale’s Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot

People often see parallels between ancient Stoic philosophy and the brand of existential philosophy described by the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl in his bestselling self-help book Man’s Search for Meaning (1946). Frankl never mentions the Stoics, perhaps he’d never actually read them, although he arrives at some remarkably similar conclusions concerning human freedom in the face of adversity:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. — Man’s Search for Meaning

Frankl, who was Jewish, was incarcerated in several Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, during the Second World War. He developed his personal philosophy as a way of coping with the horrors of life there. After the war, his writings became famous, especially Man’s Search for Meaning. Many people find his ideas particularly inspiring, and credible as a source of finding emotional strength and meaning in adversity, because they were tested in the most extreme circumstances imaginable.

There’s a similar but less well-known story concerning James (or “Jim”) Stockdale, an American naval pilot who was captured and tortured for seven years in a North Vietnamese prison camp nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton. Both men describe how they relied on their philosophy of life as a way of enduring gruelling treatment, and inconceivable abuse at the hands of their tormentors, over the course of several long years. However, whereas Frankl invented his own philosophy, Stockdale had read the Stoics and explicitly drew upon their ideas as a way of responding to his situation.

After the war, Stockdale lectured on Stoicism and coping with torture and imprisonment. He eventually rose to the rank of vice admiral in the US Navy and even had a (somewhat ill-fated) run as a vice-presidential candidate, in 1992, on the same ticket as independent Ross Perot. Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot (1995) is a collection of speeches and essays by Stockdale, which outline his views on leadership, ethics, and resilience, in military life.

Although he touches on Stoicism in a number of writings, I’m going to focus on Stockdale’s most explicit discussion of the philosophy, which is in the text of a speech titled Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus’s Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior, delivered at the Great Hall, King’s College, London, in 1993. It’s a relatively short speech, and I think anyone interested in Stoicism would benefit from reading it, whether or not they’ve served in the military themselves.

Courage Under Fire

Stockdale tells how he discovered Stoicism, midway through his life, as a “gray-haired” thirty-eight year old naval pilot in graduate school at Stanford University. Stockdale had become tired of the subject he’d enrolled to study, international relations, but stumbled across the philosopher Philip Rhinelander, Dean of Humanities and Sciences, who took him under his wing. Following a term of weekly private tutorial sessions, Rhinelander handed Stockdale a carefully-chosen book that would change the rest of his life profoundly.

On my last session, he reached high in his wall of books and brought down a copy of The Enchiridion. He said, “I think you’ll be interested in this.”

This happens to echo a passage at the start of The Meditations, where Marcus Aurelius writes of his most-beloved philosophy tutor:

From Rusticus, I gained the idea that my character was in need of correction and therapy [therapeia]… and finally, it was through him that I came to know the Discourses of Epictetus, as he lent me a copy from his own library. — Meditations, 1.7

The Enchiridion, or Handbook, of Epictetus is a concise summary of key passages from the longer Discourses. (Although only four out of the original eight volumes of The Discourses survive today and the Enchiridion therefore contains some material you won’t find in them.)

Epictetus, a former slave, went on to earn his freedom, and became arguably the most influential philosophy teacher in Roman history. However, as Stockdale notes, the writings we usually attribute to Epictetus weren’t strictly-speaking written by him but transcribed from his seminars by Arrian of Nicomedia, one of his most devoted students, “a very smart, aristocratic Greek in his twenties.”

After hearing his first few lectures, he is reported to have exclaimed something like, “Son of a gun! We’ve got to get this guy down on papyrus!”

In fact, under the emperor Hadrian, Arrian was appointed consul and went on to become one of most highly-accomplished Roman statesmen and generals of his age. He was also a prolific writer, penning a variety of works on history and military tactics. I don’t think Stockdale actually mentions that Arrian was a Roman general, although when speaking of the Enchiridion he does add:

Rhinelander told me that last morning, “As a military man, I think you’ll have a special interest in this. Frederick the Great never went on a campaign without a copy of this handbook in his kit.”

Of course, many centuries earlier, another European ruler and military commander had devoted himself to the study of Epictetus’ philosophy.

Rhinelander told me that Marcus Aurelius took the Roman Empire to the pinnacle of its power and influence. And Epictetus, the great teacher, played his part in changing the leadership of Rome from the swill he had known in the Nero White House to the power and decency it knew under Marcus Aurelius.

Although their lives overlapped, Marcus Aurelius probably never met Epictetus. He was only a boy, and in Rome, when Epictetus died in Greece. However, the circle of Stoic tutors that surrounded Marcus included several older men who we can reasonably assume had studied with Epictetus in person. A later Roman historian appears to suggest that Marcus’ tutor, Junius Rusticus, had served alongside Arrian in the military. So it’s tempting to wonder whether Rusticus obtained from Arrian, in person, the copy of The Discourses that he later gave to Marcus.

During the next three years, as a squadron commander in the US navy, no matter what aircraft carrier he was aboard, what Stockdale called his “Epictetus books” were always by his bedside. By this he meant not only the Enchiridion and Discourses of Epictetus but also Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, all of which Stockdale considered essential reading for an understanding of Epictetus’ Stoicism.

Epictetus really grabbed Stockdale’s attention because instead of teaching his students to use empty rhetoric or abstract logic his primary concern, he said, was to use Stoic philosophy to teach them how to endure such misfortunes as imprisonment, torture, and exile, and ultimately how to master their own fear of dying. Stockdale felt very strongly that these lessons from Stoicism had somehow transformed his character and improved his life.

I think it was obvious to my close friends, and certainly to me, that I was a changed man and, I have to say, a better man for my introduction to philosophy and especially to Epictetus.

Stoicism particularly resonated with him because of the analogies it draws between military life and life in general.

Undergirding my new confidence was the realization that I had found the proper philosophy for the military arts as I practiced them. The Roman Stoics coined the formula Vivere militare! — “Life is being a soldier.” Epictetus in Discourses: “Do you not know that life is a soldier’s service? One must keep guard, another go out to reconnoitre, another take the field. If you neglect your responsibilities when some severe order is laid upon you, do you not understand to what a pitiful state you bring the army in so far as in you lies?”

Little did Stockdale realize at this time, though, that his education in Stoicism was about to be put to the test in the most gruelling circumstances imaginable.

The Hanoi Hilton

At the outset of the Vietnam War, Stockdale was shot down over enemy territory and captured. It’s best to quote his own words:

On September 9, 1965, I flew at 500 knots right into a flak trap, at tree-top level, in a little A-4 airplane — the cockpit walls not even three feet apart — which I couldn’t steer after it was on fire, its control system shot out. After ejection I had about thirty seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed in the main street of a little village right ahead. And so help me, I whispered to myself: “Five years down there, at least. I’m leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.”

Foremost in his mind was the key Stoic doctrine found in the opening sentence of the Enchiridion: “Some things are up to us and other things are not.” Good and evil, thought Stockdale, do not reside in external events, but in our own freewill, and in the use we make of whatever befalls us.

That was the core philosophy that he clung on to as his parachute snagged a tree, dropping into the jungle. He was nearly beaten to death by a gang of ten or fifteen villagers, and dragged off to spend the next seven years of his life incarcerated in a North Vietnamese torture camp, four of which were spent in isolation. After the fall, Stockdale’s leg was broken and left permanently damaged. This struck him as ironic because, as a slave, Epictetus reputedly had his leg broken by his cruel owner, and he was left lame.

Stoics typically seek to turn misfortunes into memorable philosophical lessons, and that’s exactly what Epictetus appears to have done in this instance.

Lameness is an impediment to the leg, but not to the Will; and say this to yourself with regard to everything that happens. For you will find such things to be an impediment to something else, but not truly to yourself.

As he limped around the Vietnamese prison camp on crutches, therefore, Stockdale inevitably found himself reflecting on the sudden parallels between his own situation and the ancient “world of Epictetus”, where Stoic philosophy became the key to survival.

As the senior US officer in the camp, Stockdale initially found himself in charge of fifty fellow prisoners but as the war rolled on the population grew to over four hundred. They were interrogated at gunpoint on a daily basis and, when they didn’t comply with guards’ requests for information or taped confessions, they were frequently tortured by having their arms bound with ropes behind their back, which were progressively tightened like a tourniquet, cutting off circulation until they couldn’t breathe. Prisoners were clamped in leg irons or kept in isolation for months at a time as part of a concerted attempt to break them.

Stockdale endured this for over seven years before the war ended and he and his fellow prisoners were released. The key, he says, was realize that although his captors could control most things, including torturing his body, he was still free to choose how to respond, as he had learned from Epictetus. It was this focus on what modern Stoics call “The Dichotomy of Control” that allowed Stockdale to endure torture and isolation without having his spirit permanently broken.

Epictetus said: “Men, the lecture-room of the philosopher is a hospital; students ought not to walk out of it in pleasure, but in pain.” If Epictetus’s lecture room was a hospital, my prison was a laboratory — a laboratory of human behavior. I chose to test his postulates against the demanding real-life challenges of my laboratory. And as you can tell, I think he passed with flying colors.

Conclusion

You’ll already have noticed that Stockdale has a gift for using language that’s concise, even blunt, but effective. For instance, he says more about the relationship between Stoicism and Christianity in two short sentences than others have managed to say in an entire books:

Although pagan, the Stoics had a monotheistic, natural religion and were great contributors to Christian thought. The fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man were Stoic concepts before Christianity.

Like many people who are drawn to the Stoics today, Stockdale loved their relentless focus on the practical application of philosophy to daily life. In another speech in the same volume, titled Arrian’s Enchiridion and the Discourses of Epictetus, he writes:

[Epictetus’] manner of speaking was not that of your typical prissy moralist, though he focused explicitly and almost entirely on conduct. He and his philosophic protégé, the seventy-one years younger Emperor Marcus Aurelius, went down in history as practicing Stoics, not boring theoreticians. Both were disinterested in the “intellectual paraphernalia” of most “philosophies,” including their own — Stoic physics, Stoic logic, and so on. “What do I care?” asked Epictetus, “whether all existing things are composed of atoms, or of indivisibles, or of fire or earth? Is it not enough to learn the true nature of the good and the evil?”

Elsewhere Stockdale quotes, with satisfaction, the philosopher Will Durant’s appraisal of the Stoics:

Stoicism was a noble philosophy and proved more practicable than a modern cynic would expect. It brought together all the elements of Greek thought in a final effort of the pagan mind to create a system of morals acceptable to the classes that had abandoned the ancient creed; and though it naturally won only a small minority to its standards, those few were everywhere the best. Like its Christian counterparts, Calvinism and Puritanism, it produced the strongest characters of its time. Theoretically it was a monstrous doctrine of an isolated and pitiless perfectionism. Actually it created men of courage, and saintliness, and goodwill, like Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Cato the Younger. It influenced Roman jurisprudence and the building of a law of nations, and it helped to hold ancient society together until a new faith came.

Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot isn’t as widely-read or well-known as it deserves to be. Everyone I’ve ever met who’s read it has been impressed both by its style and content. There’s something unique about Stockdale’s way of talking about philosophy, and his personal story, like Viktor Frankl’s, is humbling and inspiring to modern readers.

It somehow validates the claims of Stoicism to offer a philosophy of life that might endure in the face of even the most extreme tyranny and hardship. The vast majority of us today are fortunate enough never to have to really put that to the test so there’s something undeniably of value in Stockdale’s personal account of using Stoic philosophy to survive the Hanoi Hilton. I think anyone who’s interested in Stoicism, or emotional resilience, should read this book, especially the speech we focused on above: Courage Under Fire.

Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life

Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life

Cleanthes, the second head of the Stoic school, once said that while its philosophical doctrines may well be contrary to popular opinion they are surely not contrary to reason. He was speaking of “paradox”, which literally means contrary to opinion in Greek. Stoic philosophy, like the philosophy of Socrates, was known in the ancient world both for its famous paradoxes and for its rigorous appeal to reason.

It’s worth clearing up from the outset that the word “stoicism” (lower case) denotes a personality trait, having a stiff upper lip, whereas “Stoicism” (capitalized) is an entire school of Greek philosophy. The relationship between these two things is pretty tenuous, although they’re often mistakenly conflated.

Stoicism was meant to shake things up by challenging its followers to swim against the tide and embrace a moral worldview radically at odds with the values implicitly accepted by the majority of ordinary people. In doing so, it explicitly cast itself as a form of psychological therapy (therapeia) and self-improvement. It’s experienced a resurgence in popularity in recent decades because its emphasis on “philosophy as a way of life” appeals to a growing number of people as an alternative to Christianity and other religions. However, Stoicism is a philosophy not a religion. Its conclusions were based solely on reason rather than faith, tradition, or revelation. Massimo Pigliucci’s How to be a Stoic provides a restatement of Stoic philosophy and practices that takes the form of a self-help guide but one that attempts to update Stoicism in terms of a contemporary scientific worldview.

The Author

Pigliucci is professor of philosophy at City College of New York but he also holds PhDs in genetics and evolutionary biology. He credits his background in both philosophy and science as explaining the desire to find a rational philosophy of life and worldview that, in turn, led him to ancient virtue ethics and eventually to Stoicism. He says he was raised a Catholic but abandoned belief in Christianity as a teenager and like many others today was left looking for something else to replace religion as a guide to life. Pigliucci found that Stoicism satisfied the same needs as religion in that it could provide him with a practical philosophy of life. However, it was also fundamentally rational and science-friendly.

The Stoics were materialists who believed in a God that was synonymous with Nature, a forerunner of the philosopher’s God of Spinoza and subsequently Einstein. Pigliucci found this appealing as a scientist because it allows us to find a place for spirituality, alongside reason, and without any form of superstition. The final thing that drew him to Stoicism was the way it directly engages with the existential problem of our own mortality. The Stoics neither reassure us with the promise of an afterlife nor simply turn away from the problem and ignore it, burying their heads in the sand. “A man cannot live well”, said Seneca, “if he knows not how to die well.”

Having recently turned fifty, Pigliucci found himself, midway upon life’s journey, re-evaluating things and turning to Stoic philosophy as a way of coming to terms with the crude fact of his own mortality. He found himself in agreement with the core tenets of Stoicism but was also reassured that as a rational philosophy it was open to revision in areas where modern science or philosophy has made progress. So he states quite frankly “I have decided to commit to Stoicism as a philosophy of life”.

The Journey

The book opens with an account of Pigliucci’s personal journey. It describes how, faced with a bewildering array of religions and philosophies to help us make sense of life, he chose to become a Stoic. He immediately explains, for readers unfamiliar with the philosophy, that this does not mean being unemotional like Mr. Spock from Star Trek. Stoics have feelings too. They just seek to reduce the hold unhealthy and irrational ones have over the mind and to replace them with more healthy and rational ones. One of its central practical components is the habit of distinguishing rationally between what is under our direct control and what is not in any given situations, especially ones that might be expected to upset us. Stoics learn to take more responsibility for their own thoughts and actions not to accept the reality that other things in life are not entirely under their control. Ancient Greek philosophy refers to the state of mind someone has when they fulfil their potential and live in accord with reason as “virtue” (arete). That word can sound overly pompous and moralizing to some modern readers but it can also be translated using the slightly broader term “excellence”.

Pigliucci says he was drawn to Stoicism because of its emphasis on trying to flourish by living rationally and virtuously. He emphasizes from the outset that although Stoicism involves cultivating a special kind of indifference (apatheia) and acceptance toward external events, beyond our direct control, that does not make it passive or apathetic, in the modern sense of the word. The very thing that attracted him most was the way it attempts to square this circle by combining emotional acceptance with a commitment to positive action in the world. He does readers a service by making these simple points in the opening pages because it’s a common misconception that Stoics are unemotional and passive or disinterested in external events. Nothing could be further from the truth, though. Pigliucci was raised in Rome and says that since high school, where he studied Greek and Roman history and philosophy, he had an awareness of Stoicism as part of his cultural heritage. Many other people who “discover” Stoicism today have a kind of deja vu experience as they notice its ideas seem strangely familiar. Traces of its influence crop up throughout Western art and literature. In some ways, Stoicism is also the great grandaddy of the modern field of self-improvement.

Pigliucci is a member, along with me, of the multidisciplinary team that run a non-profit philanthropic organization called Modern Stoicism. Each year, Modern Stoicism puts on a free online course called Stoic Week, which helps people to try out different Stoic practices each day. It’s grown rapidly over the last five years and last Fall about seven thousand people from all around the world took part. Pigliucci cites this as one of several pieces of evidence pointing toward the conclusion that Stoicism is suddenly gathering popularity again. He rightly stresses that the data collected from Stoic Week and other research projects are tentative. These are merely pilot studies, nevertheless they consistently provide evidence that following Stoic practices can have a beneficial effect on mood and life satisfaction, as shown by results from established psychological measures.

What is Stoicism?

Stoicism is a school of ancient Greek philosophy, founded at Athens by a Phoenician merchant called Zeno of Citium around 301 BC. For many years, Zeno had studied different schools of Athenian philosophy before founding his own. He’d embraced the austere lifestyle of a Cynic philosopher as well as studying in the Platonic Academy and with the dialecticians of the less well-known Megarian School. The Cynics and Platonists were often contrasted insofar as the former embraced a simple but extremely demanding approach to philosophy as a way of life whereas the latter were somewhat more, well, “academic” and scholarly. Zeno’s Stoicism tried to bring together the best of both traditions.

Whereas the Cynics eschewed bookish studies, Zeno introduced a threefold curriculum for his Stoic students encompassing Ethics, Physics and Logic. However, like the Cynics, the Stoics remained wary of study or debate that did not serve the fundamental goal of life, defined as “living in agreement with nature”. As Pigliucci explains, this didn’t mean hugging trees but rather fulfilling our natural potential as animals gifted with language and reason. For Stoics this ultimately equates to living in accord with virtue, and the love of wisdom. The Cynics had taught the austere view that everything except virtue should be seen as indifferent whereas the Platonists had recognized a variety of things as contributing to the good life. Zeno adopted a compromise position by arguing that though virtue is the only true good, other things in life naturally have some value albeit of an inferior sort.

In 155 BC, the head of the Stoic school at that time, Diogenes of Babylon, went from Athens to Rome on an ambassadorial trip, along with two other philosophers. While he was there he also lectured on philosophy, introducing Stoicism to the Roman Republic, where it quickly took root as it resonated with traditional Roman values. Over the following centuries many influential Roman statesmen became associated with Stoicism. The last famous Stoic we hear about is the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations survives today. From Zeno to Marcus, therefore, the history of the Stoic school as a living tradition spanned nearly five centuries, before it was gradually eclipsed by Neoplatonism and then by Christianity. Pigliucci begins by surveying the history of the school for those unfamiliar with the subject, although the main focus of his book is how Stoicism can be reprised in the modern world by providing us with a modern-day philosophy of life compatible with the current scientific worldview. He weaves his account of Stoic theory and practice into anecdotes drawn from his own life experiences, showing how the philosophy can be applied to everyday challenges.

Pigliucci was a relative newcomer to Stoicism when he began writing this book so he takes the famous Roman Stoic Epictetus as his guide along the way. Like Epictetus, he divides Stoicism into the three “disciplines” of desire, action, and assent. The main part of the book is divided into three sections. These deal respectively with training in mastering our desires and emotions, organizing our actions around a coherent moral goal, and learning to withhold our assent from initial misleading impressions.

The Discipline of Desire

Epictetus believed that we should learn to master our own fears and desires before focusing on the more theoretical aspects of Stoic philosophy. Pigliucci describes this discipline of desire as knowing “what it is proper to want or not want”. He therefore begins with the Stoic doctrine expressed in the opening sentence of Epictetus’ Handbook: some things are up to us whereas other things are not. The whole practice of Stoic philosophy, at least in Epictetus, revolves around this fundamental distinction between our own voluntary actions and everything else, i.e., what we do and what happens to us. Many people today are familiar with this aspect of Stoicism from the Serenity Prayer made famous by Alcoholics Anonymous: “God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.” Pigliucci stumbled across this prayer himself in the Kurt Vonnegut novel Slaughterhouse Five. It’s one of the central tenets of Stoicism that we should take greater responsibility for our own voluntary thoughts and actions while emotionally accepting the fact that other things are beyond our direct control. Bearing that simple distinction in mind has tremendous benefits in terms of building emotional resilience. However, people sometimes confuse it with an attitude of passive resignation, which it is certainly not.

The Stoics explained this paradox through the metaphor of an archer who places great importance on the way he draws his bow, takes aim, and releases the arrow. Once he’s done his part, he accepts that whether or not he actually hits his target is something ultimately in the hands of fate. It could move, for example, or a gust of wind could blow his arrow off course. The Stoic archer accepts this from the outset and although he has an external goal, or target, he focuses his will only on doing what’s under his control to the best of his ability, while accepting both external success and failure with equanimity. Pigliucci discusses how this kind of thinking helped him to cope with the stress of being surrounded by angry crowds on the streets of Istanbul following the failed 2016 military coup d’état against the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Pigliucci next appeals to modern biological science to explain the Stoic definition of the goal of life, “living in accord with nature”. This was meant as a call to fulfil our human potential as inherently social creatures, capable of reason. He argues that it’s a serious mistake for modern scientists and philosophers to reject the concept of human nature. Although Darwinism dealt a deathblow to the assumption that humans are somehow essentially unique compared to other animals nevertheless, Pigliucci argues, our capacity for complex grammar and reasoning is special enough to justify speaking about it as a defining characteristic of human nature. The Stoics also argue that although nature has given us instincts, like those of other animals, we’re capable of reflecting on whether we actually want to act in accord with them or not. Children with chickenpox feel a desperate urge to scratch their itching blisters. However, if they’re old enough to understand then reason is capable of stepping in and telling them that’s a bad idea and that their natural instinct should be resisted. That’s why the Stoics called reason the “master faculty” and believed that we had a duty to protect and cultivate our ability to apply it in daily life.

Their goal was to learn the art of living wisely. However, they believed that human nature is both rational, meaning capable of reason, and social. Human infants are born relatively defenceless compared with those of other mammals. We have evolved a powerful parental instinct toward our offspring, which the Stoics called “natural affection”. They believed that when this pro-social aspect of human nature is developed in accord with reason it becomes the basis of social virtues such as justice, fairness, and kindness. Pigliucci explains that the Stoics believed reason guides us to extend this natural familial affection to others on the basis of their humanity, and capacity for reason. Stoics learn to care about humanity in progressively widening circles through a process called oikeiosis, which is notoriously tricky to translate but means something along the lines of metaphorically bringing others into our household. This leads to the famous ethical cosmopolitanism of the Stoics, who viewed themselves, like Socrates and the Cynics before them, as citizens of the whole world, and the rest of humanity are their fellow-citizens. This moral vision preceded the Christian notion of the “brotherhood of man” by four centuries.

Epictetus also said that external things are indifferent but how we handle them is not. The Stoics compared the way we deal with even the most serious life events to playing a ball game: death, bereavement, exile, poverty, etc. It’s not the thing itself that really matters, in other words, but the way we choose to deal with it. That’s what they mean by virtue. The ball is relatively worthless, in itself, but the game consists in handling it well. However, as we’ve seen, some external things are naturally “preferred” over others, according to Stoic ethics. Pigliucci explains the tricky Stoic concept of the value (axia) assigned to “indifferent” things by comparing it to the concept of “lexicographic preference” in modern economics. People are willing to trade money for a holiday because they place them both on the same lexicographic level but you probably wouldn’t trade your daughter for any amount of money or holidays. For the Stoics, health is preferred to sickness, wealth is preferred to poverty, and life is preferred to death, but wisdom and virtue should never be sacrificed in exchange for any of these external things because their value is of an entirely different order.

The discipline of desire is believed to be related to Stoic Physics and theology. The Stoics were basically pantheists and some aspects of their theology are unappealing to modern readers. The majority of modern Stoics, perhaps surprisingly, are atheists or agnostics. However, Pigliucci argues that Stoicism makes room for both religious believers and unbelievers. The founders of Stoicism leaned heavily on the Argument from Design, which holds that because the universe, in all its complexity, looks like it was planned by some divine craftsman it therefore must have been. Fewer people are persuaded by that argument today because Darwin’s theory of natural selection provides a plausible explanation for the diversity of animal life, which is simpler insofar as its based largely upon observable physical phenomena. Modern astrophysics likewise explains cosmological phenomena without reference to a divine creator.

However, most modern Stoics find its central principles to be justifiable without reference to theology. Indeed, the ancient Stoics actually appeal quite seldom to the existence of God in the philosophical arguments they provided for their ethical doctrines. Moreover, they employed an argument based on agnosticism known as “God or atoms” to show that whether one believes in divine Providence or that the universe is created by the random collision of atoms, either way the core doctrines of Stoicism would still be justifiable. Marcus Aurelius actually refers to this ten times in the Meditations but Seneca and Epictetus also mention it in passing so it’s acknowledged by all three of the main Stoics whose works survive today. As far as we know, all of the ancient Stoics believed in God, and placed great value on piety, although they nevertheless disagreed about many important aspects of theology. What matters from a modern perspective is that Stoicism is, and always has been, flexible enough to accomodate atheists and agnostics as well as pantheists. It’s a philosophy, at the end of the day, and not a religion.

The Discipline of Action

Stoics were trained through the discipline of fear and desire to master their feelings, facing external misfortune without becoming upset. However, the discipline of action taught them to balance this emotional acceptance with vigorous moral action in the service of humanity, their fellow world-citizens. Pigliucci describes it as “how to behave in the world.” The word “stoicism” (lower-case S) has come to mean something like being unemotional and having a stiff upper lip, which doesn’t even do justice to the discipline of desire. However, it really falls short when it comes to the rest of Stoicism (capital S) as we’ll see.

Stoicism is all about virtue. Pigliucci explains this by referring to the importance of improving our character. For example, before he gained his freedom, Epictetus was a slave owned by the Emperor Nero’s secretary. He lived through the madness, corruption and tyranny of Nero. He also witnessed the Stoic Opposition to Nero, the criticism and resistance toward him and other autocratic rulers from principled republican Stoics, who were frequently exiled or even executed for speaking truth to power. Epictetus told his students anecdotes about several of these Roman Stoic heroes, who he appealed to as moral exemplars and role models. Pigliucci, while acknowledging that no role models can be perfect, refers to modern-day examples of principled individuals such as Malala Yousafzai. He also mentions the psychological research on virtues carried out by Martin Seligman, Christopher Peterson, and their colleagues, which shows a surprising amount of consistency in the values of different individuals around the world in this regard. Their model incorporates the four “cardinal virtues” of Socratic philosophy: wisdom, justice, courage and temperance. This fourfold model provides Stoics with a broad template for understanding the character traits that define human excellence.

Another of the Socratic paradoxes embraced by the Stoics is that no-one does evil knowingly, or willingly. Pigliucci explains this tricky concept by introducing a very crucial word: amathia. It denotes a form of moral ignorance, the opposite of genuine wisdom. Someone can be very intelligent yet still exhibit moral ignorance or amathia. The Stoics liked to point to Euripides’ Medea as an example. However, Pigliucci draws upon Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” to show modern readers how it’s possible for ordinary people to do evil things through moral stupidity. Arendt coined the phrase while covering for The New Yorker the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi lieutenant-colonel and one of the organizers of the Holocaust. Like Socrates and the Stoics before her, Arendt argued that the evil of such men consists in a kind of moral ignorance or thoughtlessness. Eichmann wasn’t evil in his own eyes; he genuinely believed he was just “doing his job”. Whereas Christian forgiveness depends on faith, Stoicism achieves something similar by interpreting all evil as due to moral ignorance. As a consequence, Stoics place more emphasis on reforming those who do wrong rather than punishing them for the sake of retribution.

The role of positive role models in Stoicism is further explored by introducing readers to one of the most important examples of a modern-day Stoic: James Stockdale. Stockdale was a US Navy fighter pilot shot down over North Vietnam at the start of the war. He’d been introduced to Stoicism at college and as he ejected over enemy territory the thought flashed through his mind that he was leaving his world and entering the world of Epictetus. He spent over seven years as a prisoner of war in the so-called Hanoi Hilton where he was repeatedly tortured and found himself making more and more use of ancient Stoicism as a coping strategy. After the war Stockdale wrote and lectured about Stoicism and his experiences in Vietnam. Pigliucci sets his example beside that of Cato of Utica, the great Stoic hero of the Roman republic, who opposed Julius Caesar’s rise to power.

He then turns to a discussion of how Stoicism has helped people more recently to cope with disability and mental illness. Larry Becker, a retired professor of philosophy, is the author of a highly-regarded academic book on Stoic ethics. He’s been suffering for decades from the effects of polio but Stoic philosophy has helped him to cope with some severe physical limitations. His strategy focuses on the need to reclaim our agency, focus on our abilities, develop a life plan, and strive for internal harmony. He also cautions us to beware of brick walls and to know when to quit. Pigliucci likewise provides examples of two more contemporary individuals who have used Stoicism to help them cope with clinical depression and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) respectively.

The Discipline of Assent

The disciplines of desire and action deal with our feelings and behaviour. The discipline of assent, however, is about our thoughts. It teaches us to suspend value judgements in response to our initial impressions and how to apply reason to evaluate them instead. Pigliucci describes it as “how to react to situations”. Stoics believe that by coming to terms with our own mortality and learning to adopt a philosophical attitude toward it, we overcome many other fears in life. Zeno of Citium, the founder of the school, opted to die by the traditional method of euthanasia, refusing food, when he was very elderly and concluded his health was too poor to continue. Pigliucci notes the value that Stoic perspectives on death have in relation to modern questions surrounding the ethics of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

There are many other aspects of life, though, where our initial reactions can be unhelpful. When Epictetus’ iron lamp was stolen from outside his home he told his students about it and used it as an example of something to be shrugged off with indifference. Pigliucci compares this to his experience of being pickpocketed on the subway in Rome. His initial impression was one of shock and anger, naturally, but Stoicism had taught him how to take a step back from these automatic impressions. He told himself instead that what happened to him was not under his direct control but how he chose to respond was, and it was no longer worth getting angry about. In relation to anxiety, Epictetus says that we should always consider how it’s typically fuelled by placing too much importance on things beyond of our direct control. He also taught that the wise man is prepared to endure solitude without complaint as sometimes being a natural part of life.

This leads into Pigliucci’s discussion of love and friendship. The Stoic wise man prefers to have good friends but doesn’t absolutely need them. It’s more important to be capable of acting like a friend, something under our control, than to have lots of friends, something that’s partly in the hands of fate. For ancient Greeks, the line between friendship and love was more blurred than we tend to assume today, and the Stoics, indeed, viewed friendship as a kind of love. A good friend is a good person, someone whose character we admire and values we share. Perhaps one of the most highly valued externals, from a Stoic perspective.

Pigliucci concludes by describing a dozen valuable Stoic exercises:

1. Examine your impressions, checking whether they place too much value on external things outside your direct control.

2. Remind yourself of the impermanence of things.

3. The reserve clause, which means adding the caveat “fate permitting” to every planned action.

4. How can I use virtue here and now?

5. Pause and take a deep breath, waiting for strong emotions to abate naturally rather than acting rashly when we’re upset.

6. Other-ize, getting beyond personalization by considering how we’d feel about our misfortunes if they befell another person.

7. Speak little and well — the Stoics were known for speaking “laconically”, like Spartans.

8. Choose your company well.

9. Respond to insults with humour.

10. Don’t speak too much about yourself.

11. Speak without judging, just stick to the facts and remain objective.

12. Reflect on your day, by reviewing events each evening in a constructive and dispassionate manner, looking for areas in which you can improve.

I would suggest some people might benefit from reading these first before starting the book.

Conclusion

Pigliucci is an important voice in the modern Stoicism movement. Instead of lecturing readers on academic philosophy he’s chosen to provide them with a practical guide to living like a Stoic in the real world. He shows that Stoicism can provide a philosophy of life consistent with a modern scientific worldview, and with atheism or agnosticism as well as different forms of religion. He provides many vivid examples of everyday situations in which Stoic philosophy was found helpful in his own life. He also draws upon many examples from the lives of other individuals to make his point that adopting Stoic attitudes and behaviours can contribute to a more fulfilled and emotionally resilient way of living.

I think that both newcomers and people who are familiar with the philosophy will potentially obtain something of value from reading this book. The Stoics believed that the wise man is naturally drawn to writing books that help other people and they would surely see How to be a Stoic as a fitting attempt to reprise their timeless wisdom for the 21st century.

Of course someone can exhibit controlled anger. That’s irrelevant to this argument, though. The point here is that Peterson ignores the distinction between anger and assertion, in order to make his point, but he’s wrong to do so, and to support that objection I only have to show that one can sometimes be assertive, or even behave angrily, without feeling anger. The existence of something called “controlled anger” wouldn’t contribute anything one way or another to the logic of that argument.

I think I’ve spent enough time on his writings for now. The beauty of the examples I chose from his writings is that they stand on their…

I can only assure you that the article wasn’t written with any anger in mind. The goal was to answer questions that have been repeatedly put to me about this topic, and to help explain the difference between these writings and the Stoic and cognitive model of anger. If you perceive anger, without any actual evidence of it, perhaps that’s a reflection of your own presuppositions about critics of Jordan Peterson, i.e., something you brought with you to the article rather than something that’s actually in it.

I think I’ve spent enough time on his writings for now. The beauty of the examples I chose from his writings is that they stand on their own. If you think some “deeper meaning” would change the significance of the main quotes I took from him then by all means explain how that could be the case and I’ll give it my attention and respond. As far as I can see, though, that would be virtually impossible because the main parts of his writing that I’m interested in responding to actually appear fairly straightforward and unambiguous — that’s why I picked them for this article, precisely so that people wouldn’t just complain that they mean something else in another context, etc. So I invite you to explain, if you can, how the meaning of the key quotes could potentially be interpreted differently in a way that actually changes the objections raised against them in this article. Thanks.

The Lost Exhortations to Philosophy

The Lost Exhortations to Philosophy

’Tis glorious to tower aloft amongst great men, to have care for fatherland, to spare the downtrodden, to abstain from cruel bloodshed, to be slow to wrath, give quiet to the world, peace to one’s time. This is virtue’s crown, by this way is heaven sought. So did that first Augustus, his country’s father, gain the stars, and is worshipped in the temples as a god. — Pseudo-Seneca, Octavia

The most famous Stoic philosopher is, without doubt, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. Countless people have read his book The Meditations since the first English translation appeared in the early 17th century. Many moviegoers also became familiar with Marcus from Richard Harris’ portrayal of him in the Hollywood sword-and-sandals epic Gladiator (2000). However, it’s less well-known that, over a century before Marcus was born, the first Roman emperor was also a student of Stoicism and the author of an essay praising philosophy.

The man we call Augustus (63 BC — 14 AD) was the founder of the Roman empire. Early in his life he was known as Octavian, the grand-nephew of the dictator Julius Caesar. Lacking any legitimate offspring, Caesar adopted Octavian and named him his heir. Following Caesar’s assassination on the Ides of March 44 BC, Rome went through a long period of political instability which culminated in the naval Battle of Actium (30 BC). The fleet of Octavian defeated the combined forces of Mark Antony and his lover, Cleopatra, the queen of Egypt. Octavian was left the sole ruler of Rome and gradually accumulated more and more powers. In 27 BC, the senate granted him the titles Augustus and Princeps, or first citizen, effectively becoming emperor and defining the role that would be occupied by his successors for centuries to come.

Augustus was certainly never remembered as a Stoic philosopher in the sense that Marcus Aurelius was. However, the historian Suetonius claims in Lives of the Caesars that Augustus was the author of numerous writings including a lost work titled Exhortations to Philosophy. We’re told that late in life Augustus would read these to a group of his intimate friends, as though delivering a class in a lecture room. Suetonius also mentions a text by Augustus called “Reply to Brutus on Cato”. We can probably assume this was a response to Brutus’ eulogy for his uncle, the famous Republican Stoic, Cato of Utica. Brutus, one of the main assassins of Augustus’ adoptive father, Julius Caesar, was also reputedly a student of Stoicism.

So, in addition to Augustus’ Exhortations to Philosophy, his Reply to Brutus on Cato may have touched on philosophical themes, as may his other lost writings. These claims become more plausible when we learn that, earlier in his life, Augustus had two Stoic tutors.

Athenodorus Canaanites & Arius Didymus

Athenodorus Canaanites, from Canaana near Tarsus, a student of Posidonius of Rhodes, was Octavian’s first Stoic tutor. He began teaching the young man in the city of Apollonia, Illyria (modern day Albania), and later followed Octavian on his return to Rome in 44 BC, aged 19. Athenodorus reputedly wrote a lost work dedicated to the elder sister of Octavian, Octavia Minor.

Octavian’s other, and probably slightly later, Stoic tutor was Arius Didymus of Alexandria. Arius was the author of an important summary of early Stoic teachings, long fragments of which survive today in the anthologies of the doxographer Stobaeus. Seneca says, in On Clemency, that although Augustus naturally had a temper, and executed many enemies earlier in his life, he changed completely later in his reign. Around 16 BC a man called Gnaeus Cornelius Cinna Magnus was caught plotting to assassinate Augustus. Following the advice of his wife, Livia, Augustus decided that he could no longer continue executing his enemies, and adopted a policy of clemency toward Cinna, after which plots against him apparently ceased. Arius was an expert on Stoic psychotherapy, and later, around 9 BC, wrote a highly-regarded consolation letter to Livia, the wife if Augustus, containing Stoic psychological advice to help her cope emotionally with the loss of her beloved son, Drusus. The philosophy’s value in consoling his wife, Livia, appears to have strengthened Augustus’ association with Stoicism.

Suetonius, the historian, said that Augustus had at first been interested in studying Greek literature. He trained in Greek rhetoric, although he never mastered the language, but later became more interested in philosophy, particularly Stoicism.

Later he became versed in various forms of learning through association with the [Stoic] philosopher Areus [Didymus] and his sons Dionysius and Nicanor. — Suetonius, The Lives of Caesars

We’re told that in reading both Greek and Latin, “there was nothing for which he looked so carefully as precepts and examples instructive to the public or to individuals”. He would copy these down verbatim and send them to members of his household, generals and provincial governors, who might especially benefit from them. Suetonius says Augustus even recited “entire volumes” to the senate and called the attention of the public to them through proclamations, including a speech by Publius Rutilius Rufus, another Stoic, titled “On the Height of Buildings”.

Although more of Arius’ writings survive, in this article I’m going to focus on Athenodorus and his possible influence upon Octavian. For example, in his Moralia, Plutarch recounts the following anecdote:

Athenodorus, the philosopher, because of his advanced years begged to be dismissed and allowed to go home [presumably from Rome to Tarsus], and Augustus granted his request. But when Athenodorus, as he was taking leave of him, said, “Whenever you get angry, Caesar, do not say or do anything before repeating to yourself the twenty-four letters of the alphabet,” Augustus seized his hand and said, “I still have need of your presence here,” and detained him a whole year, saying, “No risk attends the reward that silence brings.” — Plutarch, Moralia, Sayings of Romans: Caesar Augustus

This strategy of taking what modern therapists would call a “time-out” before acting on feelings of anger was fairly well-known in the ancient world. However, Athenodorus gives a very clear example of how this was to be accomplished in practice by pausing to recite the Greek alphabet. Perhaps it worked, as Seneca refers to Augustus as an example of someone who ruled without anger.

The late Emperor Augustus also did and said many memorable things, which prove that he was not under the dominion of anger. — Seneca, On Anger, 3.23

Seneca goes on to explain that Augustus was satisfied to leave the company of critics, without feeling the need to take revenge on them.

Let everyone, then, say to himself, whenever he is provoked […] Have I more authority in my own house than the Emperor Augustus possessed throughout the world? Yet he was satisfied with leaving the society of his maligner. — Seneca, On Anger, 3.24

In his earlier years, Octavian is believed to have had quite a violent temper but perhaps Seneca means to suggest that later in life, as Augustus, he overcome this tendency, perhaps in part as a consequence of his training in Stoicism.

There were several philosophers called Athenodorus but it seems likely Seneca again means the tutor of Octavian when he mentions with approval a saying from Athenodorus: “Know that you are freed from all desires when you have reached such a point that you pray to God for nothing except what you can pray for openly” (Letters, 10). In other words, our deepest desires should be such as we would be unashamed to admit in public — a typical Cynic-Stoic theme that recurs in the writings of Marcus Aurelius.

Elsewhere Seneca also writes that Athenodorus said “he would not so much as dine with a man who would not be grateful to him for doing so” (On Tranquillity, 7). Seneca says he takes this to mean that Athenodorus would not eat with men who lay on banquets as a way of repaying their friends for their services because in doing so they rate their own generosity, with food and drink, too highly compared with friendship.

The Exhortations to Philosophy

These sayings of Athenodorus are interesting. However, Seneca also quotes a lengthy excerpt from his writings, which seems especially relevant. It’s explicitly addressed to young Roman men who are considering a life in public office, just like Octavian was when he first met Athenodorus.

It argues that although their desire to benefit society is a noble one, political office is inherently corrupting. It advises them to remain in private life and focus on improving their own character first and foremost. They can more safely benefit society by providing a living example of wisdom and virtue than by trying to exercise political influence over others. In other words, what Seneca quotes at length from Athenodorus is a typical example of an exhortation, a genre also known as philosophical protreptic.

Although Augustus’ Exhortations to Philosophy has long been lost, we know his tutor Athenodorus’ exhortation reads like this…

The best thing is to occupy oneself with business, with the management of affairs of state and the duties of a citizen: for as some pass the day in exercising themselves in the sun and in taking care of their bodily health, and athletes find it most useful to spend the greater part of their time in feeding up the muscles and strength to whose cultivation they have devoted their lives; so too for you who are training your mind to take part in the struggles of political life, it is far more honourable to be thus at work than to be idle. He whose object is to be of service to his countrymen and to all mortals, exercises himself and does good at the same time when he is engrossed in business and is working to the best of his ability both in the interests of the public and of private men.

As noted above, these are words of advice explicitly aimed at Roman youths training themselves for future political careers, possibly including the young Octavian. However, Athenodorus continues,

But because innocence is hardly safe among such furious ambitions and so many men who turn one aside from the right path, and it is always sure to meet with more hindrance than help, we ought to withdraw ourselves from the forum and from public life, and a great mind even in a private station can find room wherein to expand freely. Confinement in dens restrains the springs of lions and wild creatures, but this does not apply to human beings, who often effect the most important works in retirement. Let a man, however, withdraw himself only in such a fashion that wherever he spends his leisure his wish may still be to benefit individual men and mankind alike, both with his intellect, his voice, and his advice.

Although, in a sense, the highest calling in life involves a commitment to the welfare of society, nevertheless public office can have a corrupting influence. So one is best advised to avoid a career in politics and retire instead to private life, where wise counsel can still be given from the sidelines. We should not live like hermits, however, but as philosophers, scholars, and teachers, who share their wisdom with others and provide them with role models.

The man that does good service to the state is not only he who brings forward candidates for public office, defends accused persons, and gives his vote on questions of peace and war, but he who encourages young men in well-doing, who supplies the present dearth of good teachers by instilling into their minds the principles of virtue, who seizes and holds back those who are rushing wildly in pursuit of riches and luxury, and, if he does nothing else, at least checks their course — such a man does service to the public though in a private station.

He goes on to ask whether one does more good for society as a magistrate, whether dealing with international or domestic cases (praetor peregrinus or praetor urbanus), or as one who can show people through his own example “what is meant by justice, filial feeling, endurance, courage, contempt of death and knowledge of the gods, and how much a man is helped by a good conscience”. It is better to be a wise and virtuous role model, Athenodorus is saying, and provide an example through your own character and way of life than to exert influence over society through public office.

If then you transfer to philosophy the time which you take away from the public service, you will not be a deserter or have refused to perform your proper task. A soldier is not merely one who stands in the ranks and defends the right or the left wing of the army, but he also who guards the gates — a service which, though less dangerous, is no sinecure — who keeps watch, and takes charge of the arsenal: though all these are bloodless duties, yet they count as military service.

By now, it’s clear that Athenodorus is writing an exhortation, encouraging his young readers to embrace the life of a philosopher.

As soon as you have devoted yourself to philosophy, you will have overcome all disgust at life. You will not wish for darkness because you are weary of the light, nor will you be a trouble to yourself and useless to others. You will acquire many friends, and all the best men will be attracted towards you, for virtue, in however obscure a position, cannot be hidden, but gives signs of its presence. Anyone who is worthy will trace it out by its footsteps.

He’s saying that a Roman youth can choose a private life of wisdom and virtue, through training in philosophy, and others will still seek him out because of his character and reputation. Stoic philosophers continue to dedicate themselves to the common welfare of mankind but they do so by sharing learning rather than engaging in lawmaking or politics. However, there’s another sort of retirement from public life, which is just vice and idleness, because it lacks any concern for the welfare of others.

But if we give up all society, turn our backs upon the whole human race, and live communing with ourselves alone, this solitude without any interesting occupation will lead to a want of something to do. We shall begin to build up and to pull down, to dam out the sea, to cause waters to flow through natural obstacles, and generally to make a bad disposal of the time which Nature has given us to spend. Some of us use it grudgingly, others wastefully. Some of us spend it so that we can show a profit and loss account, others so that they have no assets remaining: something than which nothing can be more shameful. Often a man who is very old in years has nothing beyond his age by which he can prove that he has lived a long time. — Athenodorus quoted in Seneca, On Tranquility, 3

The Stoics firmly believed in the brotherhood of all mankind. One of the cardinal virtues of their philosophy is justice (dikaiosune), consisting of both fairness and benevolence toward others. As Marcus Aurelius would later put it, to turn our backs on others is to be alienated from Nature as a whole, a form of injustice and impiety.

If I remember, then, that I am a part of such a whole, I shall be well contented with all that comes to pass; and in so far as I am bound by a tie of kinship to other parts of the same nature as myself I shall never act against the common interest, but rather, I shall take proper account of my fellows, and direct every impulse to the common benefit and turn it away from anything that runs counter to that benefit. And when this is duly accomplished, my life must necessarily follow a happy course, just as you would observe that any citizen’s life proceeds happily on its course when he makes his way through it performing actions which benefit his fellow citizens and he welcomes whatever his city assigns to him. — Meditations, 10.6

Conclusion

It’s hard to say how much the young Octavian’s Stoic tutors influenced his developing character and later career as Augustus. There are some tantalizing details, though. We’re told by he author Lucian that Augustus’ stepson and successor, the Emperor Tiberius, also studied Stoicism, under an otherwise unknown tutor called Nestor. Perhaps Augustus merely dabbled in Stoicism but set a precedent, planting seeds in imperial Roman society that would only grow to maturity, over a hundred years later, with Marcus Aurelius.

There are obvious differences. Augustus was at times perhaps a more politically opportunistic and violent ruler than Marcus. He was also curiously vain by comparison. Augustus notoriously insisted that all depictions of him should show him in the prime of life. Not a single statue exists today showing what he actually looked like later in life, although he lived to seventy-five — a grand old age by Roman standards. In sharp contrast, several statues of Marcus Aurelius, apparently in his late fifties, survive to this day, some of which look frankly haggard.

Marcus mentions the first Augustus three times in The Meditations. (The names of Roman nobles can be confusing: later emperors including Marcus also bore the name Augustus.) He says that everyday words from the past now have an archaic ring to them, as do the names of famous men such as Augustus. The founder of the empire was once flesh and blood but now he’s remembered by statues and stories in history books. Marcus notes that he has watched this happen, in his own lifetime, with the emperors Hadrian and, his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius (4.33). He knew them as real people but by the time he’s writing The Meditations, they’re already beginning to be seen as merely names in history books.

Elsewhere, Marcus reminds himself that even his most illustrious predecessors are now gone, returned to dust, and that this is his own fate, despite the supreme position granted to him.

First of all, be untroubled in your mind; for all things come about as universal nature would have them, and in a short while you will be no one and nowhere, as are Hadrian and Augustus. — Meditations, 8.5

Finally, Marcus once again uses Augustus, and the image of his entire court, to contemplate the transience of power, fame, human life, and indeed all material things.

Speak both in the senate and to anyone whatever in a decorous manner, without affectation. Use words that have nothing false in them. The court of Augustus, his wife and daughter, his descendants and forebears, his sister, and Agrippa [his general], his relatives, associates and friends, Areius [Didymus], Maecenas [his friend and political advisor], his doctors, his sacrificial priests — an entire court, all of it dead. — Meditations, 8.30-31

As it happens, in this passage, Marcus also mentions Arius Didymus, one of the Stoic tutors of Augustus, whom we met earlier. Marcus reminds himself that even the Stoic philosophers who taught the first Augustus, are long dead and gone.