fbpx

Category: Philosophy

Categories
Socrates Stoicism

The Stoic Philosophy of Michael Cohen?

Today I was trying to write an article discussing my new book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius when something caught my attention.  It was the story of a lone figure facing his destiny in court.  One of the historic turning points following a period of intense political turmoil.  He speaks in paradoxical language about wisdom, virtue, freedom, and the meaning of life…

No, it wasn’t Socrates in Plato’s Apology.  It was Michael Cohen, aka Donald Trump’s erstwhile fixer and (sort of) lawyer.  As I was listening to the news today, I realized, to my surprise, that Cohen’s sentencing statement contained references to a way of looking at events that resembled the ancient doctrines of Socratic and Stoic philosophy. 

In case you’ve been living under a rock on Mars for the past couple of years, the news is that Cohen has pled guilty to eight criminal charges: five counts of tax evasion, one count of making an excessive campaign contribution, one count of causing an unlawful corporate campaign contribution and one of making false statements to a federally insured bank.  Today (12th Dec) was his day in court to be sentenced and also his big chance to summon up all of his rhetorical powers and try get himself out of the pickle he’s in. 

Perhaps surprisingly, Cohen’s sentencing statement gets off on a philosophical footing.  It opens with a famous quotation from Viktor Frankl, the author and existential psychotherapist, who survived the Nazi concentration camps:

I take full responsibility for each act that I pled guilty to, the personal ones to me and those involving the President of the United States of America. Viktor Frankl in his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” he wrote, “There are forces beyond your control that can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”

Michael Cohen

Frankl didn’t seem to realize this but the Stoics had already made this one of the central principles of their philosophy.  “It’s not things that upset us,” said Epictetus, the most famous of all Roman Stoic teachers, “but our judgements about them.”  According to the Stoics, and Frankl, we’re not free to control the events that befall us but we are free to decide how to respond, and how we think about them.  Apparently this is also Cohen’s philosophy and he wanted to make that clear to the judge, his family, and everyone else who was listening, presumably up to and including President Trump whom Cohen has implicated in some of these crimes.  Cohen’s words here allude to the fact this has already led to the current President of the USA being named in court filings as an unindicted co-conspirator.  That’s possibly about as close as a sitting president can get to actually being indicted for a federal crime. 

What Cohen seems to be trying to say here is that his willingness to voluntarily plead guilty should prove that he’s now taking full ownership for the crimes he committed.  (Although, that said, a lot of people believe there are plenty of other crimes he could have pled guilty to but hasn’t.)

That’s just the beginning, though.  Cohen immediately follows up the quote from Viktor Frankl with a philosophical paradox worthy of Socrates himself:

Your Honor, this may seem hard to believe, but today is one of the most meaningful days of my life. The irony is today is the day I am getting my freedom back as you sit at the bench and you contemplate my fate.

Michael Cohen

He’s implying that by finally taking responsibility for his crimes, and confessing them publicly in court, he’s made his life mean something once again.  Paradoxically, the day they sentence him to prison, he says, will be the day he regains his existential freedom.  This was the part that caught my attention when I heard it on the news.  Cohen’s saying that true freedom comes from within.  Even the most powerful ruler in the world can be imprisoned by his own passions and vices, if he’s a tyrant.  On the other hand, even though he’s chained and thrown in prison, a wise man can achieve true freedom, within his own mind, by liberating himself from falsehood and embracing the truth.  

Whether he realized it or not, Cohen is actually uttering one of the famous paradoxes of Stoic philosophy.  Only the wise man is really free and everyone else is enslaved.  Even when the wise man is imprisoned by a tyrant or sentenced to death like Socrates, he is still freer than everyone else, including his oppressors.  The man who is bitter, though, and hates his situation in life, is in a prison of his own making, even though he might be serving at the court of a great king, who lives in a fine palace.

What then is the punishment of those who do not accept? It is to be what they are. Is any person dissatisfied with being alone? let him be alone. […] Cast him into prison. What prison? Where he is already, for he is there against his will; and where a man is against his will, there he is in prison. So Socrates was not in prison, for he was there willingly. 

Epictetus

Indeed, Cohen goes on to make it clear that from the day he entered Trump’s service until this very moment, when he publicly disowns him in court by confessing to the crimes they committed together, he’s been living in a psychological prison of his own making.

I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the fateful day that I accepted the offer to work for a famous real estate mogul whose business acumen I truly admired. In fact, I now know that there is little to be admired. I want to be clear. I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today, and it was my own weakness, and a blind loyalty to this man that led me to choose a path of darkness over light. It is for these reasons I chose to participate in the illicit act of the President rather than to listen to my own inner voice which should have warned me that the campaign finance violations that I later pled guilty to were insidious.

Michael Cohen

It turns out that like Socrates, Cohen has an “inner voice” or daimonion that warns him not to undertake certain actions.  Socrates listened to his when it told him not to accept favours from the powerful and thereby make himself indebted to them.  Cohen says his mistake, by contrast, was to ignore his own inner voice and go down the “path of darkness” by agreeing to commit various crimes on behalf of Donald Trump.

Trump keeps calling Cohen weak, because he’s flipped and turned witness against his former boss.  However, in another paradox worthy of Socrates and the Stoics, Cohen agrees that he was “weak” but only in the past when he was acting the tough guy as Trump’s fixer.  

Recently, the President Tweeted a statement calling me weak, and he was correct, but for a much different reason than he was implying. It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass. My weakness can be characterized as a blind loyalty to Donald Trump, and I was weak for not having the strength to question and to refuse his demands. I have already spent years living a personal and mental incarceration, which no matter what is decided today, owning this mistake will free me to be once more the person I really am.  

Michael Cohen

Cohen is saying that true weakness consists in acting viciously, through moral blindness.  True strength consists in freeing yourself from mental and emotional imprisonment by taking responsibility for your actions, and speaking the truth about them when it matters.  Cohen is saying that whereas he previously thought strength meant being a “loyal soldier to the President” he now realizes that was actually just weakness, and true strength would have consisted in finding the courage to say no to Trump and exposing his crimes much earlier, for the sake of his country.

Cohen promised the judge that he would stay on the straight and narrow road going forward: “I now know that every action I take in the future has to be well thought out and with honorable intention because I wish to leave no room for future mistakes in my life.”  He apologized to his family and the people of the United States in general, for his lying to them, but he didn’t actually apologize to Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, or the other women who were direct victims of his actions on behalf of Donald Trump.  

I found this statement fascinating.  It left me with a lot of unanswered questions, though.  Did he even write it himself?  Does he really mean all the things he said today in court?  I recently wrote an article about Socrates, the Stoics and Roger Stone, another of Trump’s associates whose time in the spotlight is presumably coming up very soon.  Stone has made a career out of being a self-described political “dirty trickster” and revels in his infamy.  In his recent book, he brags shamelessly about his use of the “Big Lie” technique pioneered by the Nazi propagandists:

Erroneously attributed to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, the “big lie” manipulation technique was actually first described in detail by Adolf Hitler himself. […] Nonetheless, the tactic of creating a lie so bold, massive, and even so monstrous that it takes on a life of its own, is alive and well all through American politics and news media. Make it big, keep it simple, repeat it enough times, and people will believe it.

Roger Stone

For all we know, Cohen shares the same shamelessly cynical philosophy of life, which Stone implies was the key to Trump’s electoral success.  I’d like to think Cohen’s more sincere and, for instance, he really meant his closing words:

Most all, I want to apologize to the people of the United States. You deserve to know the truth and lying to you was unjust. I want to thank you, your Honor, for all the time I’m sure you’ve committed to this matter and the consideration that you have given to my future. […] And I thank you, your Honor, I am truly sorry, and I promise I will be better. 

Michael Cohen

The judge didn’t seem persuaded, though.  He sentenced Cohen to three years in federal prison, which could have been worse but still clearly wasn’t the news for which he or his lawyers had been hoping.  Cohen said he was ready to take responsibility for his crimes, though, and accept his fate.  The real test of his newfound Stoicism therefore will be whether, as Epictetus puts it, he can write poetry contentedly while serving time inside.

And we shall then be imitators of Socrates, when we are able to write paeans in prison.

Epictetus
Categories
Books Socrates Stoicism

Book Review: Does Happiness Write Blank Pages? by Piotr Stankievicz

Does Happiness Write Blank Pages? On Stoicism and Artistic Creativity is a new book by Piotr Stankievicz, a Polish poet and philosopher.  He’s also a member of the Modern Stoicism team responsible for organizing Stoicon and Stoic Week.

Does Happiness Write Blank Pages? tackles the question of whether Stoicism, as a philosophy of life is actually incompatible with artistic creativity, as some people assume. For example, Nietzsche is quoted in one of the book’s epigraphs:

[For those] whose work is of the spirit […] it would be the loss of losses to be deprived of their subtle irritability and be awarded in its place a hard Stoic hedgehog skin.

Nietzsche really excels at misunderstanding the Stoics, and he appears to have had, at best, a very superficial acquaintance with the philosophy and its surviving texts. The ancient Stoics don’t use this “hedgehog” phrase but they do repeatedly explain that their goal is not to be like a man made of stone or iron, with a hard heart. Even the ideal Stoic Sage still experiences feelings, such as irritation, but he’s not overwhelmed by them and he chooses not to indulge or perpetuate unhealthy passions.

Nevertheless, people do frequently question whether Stoicism is compatible with creativity or not. This question is related to a broader one about whether the ideal of “happiness” (eudaimonia) conflicts with artistic creativity. We all agree that great artists are often unhappy people, the argument begins, and so to be truly creative one must suffer and be unhappy, comes the conclusion – although, on closer inspection, it should be obvious this is a non sequitur.  Another of the book’s epigraphs provides a clear example of this sort of fallacious reasoning from the pseudo-intellectual provocateur Slavoj Žižek: “The root of all human creativity lies in pursuit of unhappiness.” It’s the familiar cliche of the tortured artist, but turned by Žižek into a ludicrous overgeneralization.

Stankievicz’s book seeks to critically evaluate this assumption.  It opens with a foreword by Lawrence Becker, who sadly passed away not long before I began writing this review. Becker makes it clear that he agrees with the central claim of the book: that there is no inherent conflict between Stoic philosophy and the human capacity for creativity.

Stoic Attitudes Toward the Arts

I think Stankiewicz interprets the ancient Stoics as holding a more negative attitude toward the arts than I detect in their surviving writings. My own interpretation would be that the Stoics were very wary of the persuasive power of the arts, especially rhetoric. However, it seems to me that they were nevertheless more interested in the arts, and had more to say about them, than most other schools of ancient philosophy.  Often the Stoics drew direct inspiration from philosophical wisdom expressed in poetry.  For example, the Handbook of Epictetus concludes with a series of quotes, including the following one from Euripides: 

But whoso nobly yields unto necessity,
We hold him wise, and skill’d in things divine.

There are many such quotes scattered throughout the surviving Stoic writings: Homer and Euripides perhaps being their favourite poets. 

However, the Stoics also made use of tragic poetry in a somewhat more paradoxical way.  Plato had argued that plays should be banned from the ideal republic, in part because tragic characters such as Achilles and Oedipus set a bad example by irrationally overreacting to various misfortunes.  The Stoics, by contrast, appear more willing to engage constructively with the tragedies.  However, they do so by viewing them as though they were case studies in psychopathology rather than as providing role models for emulation.  The tragic heroes are viewed as causing their own suffering because of the misplaced values they hold.  The Stoics thereby salvage the tragedies by reading them more critically.  

Stankievicz, adopting a more negative view of the Stoics’ attitude toward the arts, writes that we have “direct, explicit and abundant textual evidence that the ancient Stoics expressed reluctance, aversion and even open hostility to art.”

Marcus Aurelius pithily sums up performances “in the amphitheater and such places” as “wearisome” and includes them in a lowly company of “the idle business of show, plays on the stage, flocks of sheep […] a bone cast to little dogs, a bit of bread into fish-ponds, laborings of ants an burden-carrying.” Another juxtaposition is even more straightforward: “Neither tragic actor nor whore.” Marcus’ disdain of theater closely parallels Epictetus’ advice that “it is not necessary to go to the theatres often.”

I’m not sure these remarks are actually all intended to express hostility, or even aversion, to art, though. It seems to me that when Marcus refers to performances in the amphitheater he’s talking about the gladiatorial games, to which the histories document his aversion. When he refers to human affairs, viewed from a cosmic perspective, as being like “plays on the stage”, it seems to me that’s no more a criticism of theatre than when we call someone a “drama queen” today.   Perhaps Marcus didn’t attend theatrical performances often but he did attend them sometimes, when in Rome, and from his letters to Fronto we can see that he clearly enjoyed reading poetry.

Stankievicz also quotes Henryk Elzenberg saying that Marcus Aurelius completely lacked artistry.  That strikes me  as a very odd and untrue remark.  Marcus had learned to paint as a teenager – he was actually introduced to philosophy by his painting master. There are clearly passages in The Meditations that exhibit an artist’s eye, e.g., his references to the beauty to be found in imperfections such as the foam on the mouth of a wild boar, the wrinkles in roaring lion’s forehead, the lines on the face of an elderly man or woman, and the cracks on the crust of a loaf of bread. (Perhaps these were things he’d painted in his youth.) Marcus also lead a troupe of dancers in his youth: the College of the Salii or leaping priests.  He presumably had this experience in mind in those passages where he refers to dancing. 

Marcus received extensive training in both Greek and Latin rhetoric from the two leading teachers of his day: Herodes Atticus and Marcus Cornelius Fronto.  Indeed, there are several passages in The Meditations that clearly show Marcus’ talent as a writer (2.17, for example).  Moreover, Marcus was highly praised by Fronto for the eloquence of his speeches.  So I find it difficult to classify him as someone entirely lacking in artistry or harbouring a general aversion to the arts.  His relationship with the arts seems more nuanced than this would imply.

The ancient Stoics in general cannot be said to have been entirely averse to the arts.  The Stoa Poikile itself has been described as resembling an art gallery. Its wall was adorned with four huge paintings by some of the finest painters of the time. It was against the backdrop of these great works of art that Zeno and later Stoics lectured, discussed philosophy, and presumably read aloud from their various writings on poetry, rhetoric, aesthetics and painting. For example, Zeno wrote five volumes on Homer, a book titled Of the Reading of Poetry and even a Handbook of Rhetoric.  Cleanthes wrote The Hymn to Zeus and other pieces of poetry.  He also wrote a book on Homer, and one titled On Beauty.  The poet Aratus, whose Phenomena survives today, was also a student of Zeno.  Chrysippus was actually mocked for quoting Euripides so extensively that he reproduced nearly the entire text of The Medea in his own writings.  He also wrote a book titled Against the Touching up of Paintings, one On Poems, and two volumes called On the Right Way of reading Poetry, as well as four volumes on rhetoric.

Seneca wrote some excellent plays, several of which survive today, as Stankievicz elsewhere notes. Seneca’s nephew, Lucan, another Stoic, wrote the epic poem Pharsalia, about the Roman civil war, the text of which largely survives today. His friend Persius, another Stoic, wrote satires many of which survive. Other Roman poets, including Horace, were also students of Stoicism, and draw upon its ideas in their writings.

In other words, despite their reservations about conventional forms of rhetoric and the persuasive influence of the arts in general, the Stoics clearly encouraged their students to study Homer, Euripides, and other poets, and to learn their own somewhat plain and unaffected style of rhetoric.  (Although Stoic rhetoric was reputedly less polished than traditional styles, it did classify artistic distinction in the use of language as a virtue of speech.)  The Stoics themselves also wrote plays and poetry in a variety of styles.  

Elsewhere, Stankievicz quotes Seneca (and Cleanthes) expressing a positive attitude toward poetry that is employed for didactic purposes:

When salutary precepts are […] expressed in verse, they descend the readier into the hearts even of the unskillful. For, according to Cleanthes, as our breath gives a more clear and shrill sound when driven through the passage of a trumpet […] so our understandings are rendered more clear, when confined to the strict laws of a verse. The same things are heard with less attention, and affect us less, when delivered in prose or common discourse, than when decorated with poetical Numbers.

Perhaps it would have been interesting for him to have said a bit more about the Stoic use of tragic characters such as Medea for the purposes of teaching lessons about the passions.  We’ve seen that Chrysippus had a great deal to say about Euripides’ Medea, although his commentary is now lost.  However, Epictetus refers to the character several times and Seneca even wrote his own version of the tragedy.  So this play, in particular, seems to have had an enduring fascination for the Stoics.

Conclusions

Stankievicz considers several distinct “themes” or motivations for creating art and evaluates each in relation to Stoic philosophy:

  • Fame
  • Profit, e.g., financial gain
  • Preservation of the artistic object
  • The artist’s self-expression
  • Gathering together knowledge about the world or human nature (the “cognitive theme”)
  • Revolution, i.e., transforming the world
  • Making the world a better place (the “axiological theme”)
  • Restoring meaning to the artist’s own life (the “autotherapeutic theme”)
  • Teaching others (the “didactic theme”)

He draws two main conclusions. The first is that some understandings of the motivations behind artistic creativity listed above are compatible with the Stoic goal of life, whereas others are not.  More specifically:

Artistic creativity is incompatible with Stoicism if it is understood as means of seeking fame […], increasing the overall value of the universe […], preserving some element of the universe […], or expressing the individuality of the artist ([…] although the incompatibility is less evident here). On the other hand, artistic creativity is a legitimately Stoic endeavor if it is understood as means of seeking profit […], comprehending the world […], changing it ([…] this case is not fully unequivocal, though), or as means to teach people […]. Finally, there is no clear answer as to artistic creativity understood as autotherapy […]

His second major conclusion is that the Romantic conception of artistic creativity is definitely incompatible with Stoicism, although the “ordinary” conception of creativity is not. Stoics can be artistically creative but a Stoic could not, he thinks, ever be a Romantic poet. 

I’m not sure I follow his arguments for one or two of the specific “themes” or motivations (or his criticisms of what he dubs the “ascetic misconception” of Stoicism) but the two overall conclusions he draws about the compatibility of Stoicism and creativity seems reasonable.  My own view is that the ancient Stoics viewed creativity as good insofar as it’s in the service of wisdom and virtue.  They mainly use poetry either to illustrate wisdom sayings or to provide examples of the unhealthy passions, which they study critically from the perspective of their cognitive theory of psychopathology. 

I think anyone interested in philosophical aesthetics would find this book rewarding, especially if they’re also interested in Stoicism.  It raises some interesting questions, which I hope will inspire more discussion of these aspects of Stoic philosophy in the future.

Categories
Socrates

Socrates the Pimp and the Celestial Art of Love

“It seems to me that in writing about the deeds of truly good men, it is proper to record not only their serious activities, but their diversions too.” That’s the opening line of Xenophon’s Symposium, a dialogue about the philosopher Socrates and his friends attending a drinking party. It’s a philosophical dialogue about the nature of love, friendship, and goodness. However, it clearly has layers of meaning and we’re warned from the outset that Socrates isn’t being entirely serious here, although he’s not entirely joking either.  The whole dialogue is steeped in double meaning and Socratic irony.

We’re told that Callias, a wealthy man who paid a great deal of money to be educated by Sophists, was strongly attracted to an adolescent boy called Autolycus. After watching a horse race together, accompanied by the boy’s father, they all set off for Callias’ house in Piraeus when they spotted Socrates with a group of his friends.  Callias invited them to join him for dinner because he was eager to enjoy their conversation.

As the symposium or drinking party gets underway, Callias wants to bring in perfumes but Socrates objects saying that men should smell of the sweat worked up in gymnasia. Autolycus’ father says that’s alright for the young but what about the old – what are they to smell of? Socrates replies “True goodness, of course.” “Where”, the man asks, “are they to get that perfume?” And Socrates replies by quoting the poet Theognis: “Good company will edify you whereas bad will rob you even of the wits you had.” This causes the friends to get into a debate about where Autolycus should find a good teacher and whether virtue can be taught at all.

There’s a lot of good humoured banter, and a bit of light philosophical discussion.  Socrates assures his friends that drinking wine gets his approval because “wine refreshes the heart”, and both allays worry while fanning the flame of good cheer. However, he says it affects the human body and mind just as plants are affected by having too much or too little water. When they get too much plants can’t stand up straight in the breeze but when they get just the right amount they grow upright and flourish. So the friends should drink just the right amount. Socrates wisely recommends that they should drink from small goblets so that they moderate their consumption, as that way he thinks they’ll enjoy the evening more. The friends agree.

They begin discussing where each man’s area of expertise lies.  When asked what he’s most proud of Autolycus says his father. So Callias remarks that Lycon, in that case, must be the richest man in the world because he obviously wouldn’t exchange all the wealth of the Great King of Persia for his beautiful son. When they come round to Socrates, though, he declares, to their surprise, that the thing he’s most proud of is his expertise as a pimp (μαστροπός).

In typical Socratic fashion, he then proceeds to define what it means to be a pimp, starting with a fairly uncontroversial statement that soon leads to something more paradoxical.  A pimp, he says, is someone who represents his client as a pleasing person to everyone he meets.  That seems reasonable enough as a starting point for their definition.  However, notes Socrates, even someone physically beautiful may give either friendly or hostile looks with the same eyes.  They may speak either modestly or insolently with the same tongue, and behave in ways that are either offensive or conciliatory. There are, he’s implying, both pleasant and unpleasant ways that even a beautiful person may behave.  So he adds a twist: a good pimp, if he’s going about his work properly, should also teach his client character traits that are pleasing and not just depend upon their looks.

Socrates continues by saying that any pimp worthy of the name should also make his client pleasing not just to one person, or a few, but to many.  The friends begin to disagree at this point, perhaps sensing that Socrates is leading them further away from the conventional meaning of the word.  Nevertheless, Socrates insists that a “supremely good pimp” would be able to make his client appear pleasing to the entire city.  This is a typical maneuver on his part.  I think he’s implying that to be pleasing to everyone, you must go beyond mere appearances and actually become pleasing in a more genuine way.  As he elsewhere likes to say, you should be as you wish to appear.

To everyone’s surprise, Socrates then concludes that his good friend Antisthenes is just that sort of pimp, having perfected precisely this art. At first, Antisthenes appears mildly offended. However, Socrates reminds Antisthenes that it was he who introduced Callias to the famous Sophist Prodicus.  Antisthenes saw that Callias had a great desire to learn philosophy and Prodicus at that time needed money. Indeed, Antisthenes has introduced Socrates to some good people as well by praising both parties so effectively that they fell in love and went hunting for one another. Antisthenes is therefore an excellent pimp, by Socrates’ standards. He means that he’s a good matchmaker for those who should be friends.  Antisthenes excels at spotting people who would benefit one another through their acquaintance. He’s good at recognizing individuals’ good qualities and praising them, accurately and truthfully, to one another.

Socrates goes even further and links being a good pimp to being an ideal citizen, like a great statesman.

It seems to me that a man who is able to recognize people who are likely to benefit each other, and who can make them desire each other, could develop friendship between political states and arrange suitable marriages, and would be a very valuable ally for both states and individuals to possess.

Socrates jokes that Antisthenes got offended at first when he called him a pimp because he didn’t realize what he meant but now the term has been properly defined, it’s clear that being a good pimp is actually something to which one should aspire because it benefits the whole of society.  The greatest pimps make the greatest statesmen?  It’s fair to say this is yet another of Socrates’ famous paradoxes.  Antisthenes says he’s no longer offended and that if he actually has the qualities that Socrates attributes to a pimp thenn his soul must be filled with true wealth, by which he means virtue.

The Argument

As they were discussing philosophy, the man in charge of the entertainers was becoming irritated because they had lost interest in his young dancers. So he starts trying to pick an argument with Socrates. He says “Aren’t you the one they call the ‘thinker’?”, referring to Antisthenes’ play The Clouds, in which Socrates was satirized quite unfairly for being a pompous intellectual. Instead of getting annoyed, Socrates just replies “Yes, that’s nicer than if they called me the ‘thoughtless’, though”, turning it into a compliment. The man persists in trying to pick a fight and brings up some of the things that would later be used against Socrates in his trial: the idea that he talks about celestial phenomena, as if this were a form of impiety. Socrates turns this around as well, though, saying that there’s nothing more celestial than the gods.

As this rather belligerent man goes on and on, spoiling the mood of the party, Antisthenes interrupts accusing him, to the others, of beginning to sound like a slanderer. Socrates tactfully points out that his friends should stop there before they also begin to sound like slanderers themselves. Phillip the comedian, who was about to make fun of the man for being a slanderer, isn’t convinced and objects that if he were to praise him instead he’d be lying, and toadying, instead of telling the truth. Socrates notes that it’s also slander to say that someone is better than everyone else, presumably because praising one person in that way implies criticism of others.

Phillip asks to whom he should compare the man if not better or worse types of people and Socrates tells his friend that he’d be better not to compare him to anyone. He advises Phillip that the way to earn one’s place at the dinner table is to keep quiet when things are better left unsaid. In other words, if you want to be welcome among friends, you have to learn how to avoid pointless arguments. In this way, says Xenophon, the heated conversation of Socrates’ inebriated companions was cooled down. Socrates then persuades them all to sing a song, “as we’re all so keen to have our voices heard”, and thereby artfully changes the subject. And he sneakily persuades the argumentative man to have his dancers perform a routine representing the Graces, who traditionally danced in a circle holding hands, and personified charm, friendship, and harmony. In other words, Socrates found an way to encourage someone who was causing an argument to exhibit his ability to restore harmony and grace to their company, and win praise by doing so.

Celestial and Common Love

After quelling the brewing argument, Socrates turns to praise of Eros or Love.

Gentlemen, we are in the presence of a great deity, as old in time as the eternal gods, and yet most youthful in appearance, who pervades all things in his greatness and is enshrined in the heart of man: I mean Love.

Socrates says he can’t think of a time when he hasn’t been in love with someone or other and he gives examples of all the people his companions love. In particular, Socrates praises Callias for being in love with Autolycus because he’s not attracted by someone pampered but by a youth who’s self-disciplined, courageous, and worthy of admiration. To be attracted by such admirable qualities is evidence of the lover’s own character.

Socrates then brings up the distinction between two Aphrodites: Celestial and Common. He says that there are different shrines for both versions of Aphrodite and she’s worshipped with different rites under either name. The Common Aphrodite he says inspires physical love whereas the Celestial Aphrodite inspires love of the mind, friendship, and more noble behaviour. Socrates says that Callias has the higher, Celestial, sort of love because he loves Autolycus for his good character.  Callias invites the boy’s father to accompany them, which proves that there’s nothing about their relationship that needs to be concealed. One of Socrates’ friends, Hermogenes, makes the astute observation that Socrates is to be admired for his exceptional ability to praise others while simultaneously showing them how they ought to behave. That’s like saying that he focuses on the best in people, and their potential for good, and praises this in such as way as to nurture it and encourage them toward greater virtue.

Socrates says that this higher love also brings more pleasure, ultimately, than merely physical love.  He says that those who crave others physically often end up criticizing their character whereas love of good character leads to friendship and companionship.  Also when we love someone for purely physical reasons, as they grow older, our love naturally wanes, whereas love of the mind grows stronger as our beloved matures.  Moreover, sexual desire is an appetite that becomes satiated, like hunger for food, whereas affection for the mind is never exhausted.

Reciprocal Love

There are several advantages, therefore, that allow us to derive more pleasure from the higher type of love.  However, Socrates now argues that the love inspired by the Celestial Aphrodite has an even more important advantage.  Whereas mere carnal love is often one-sided, it is more natural for love of good character to be reciprocated.

First of all, says Socrates, nobody can really hate someone who considers him truly good.  Secondly, nobody can hate someone who places the welfare of his beloved ahead of his own pleasure. Indeed, someone who has the higher sort of love would not even be turned away from his beloved by the “calamity of a disfiguring disease”. Those whose love and affection is mutual therefore look at one another with pleasure, and converse with friendship. They trust one another, and are considerate, sharing pleasure in one another’s successes and sorrow in their misfortunes. They continue in happiness for as long as they are together and in good health, and they care for one another in sickness. This is the true love, according to Socrates, sacred to the Celestial Aphrodite. When people treat one another like this they enjoy the continuation of their friendship even into old age.

Xenophon then portrays Socrates roundly criticizing the merely sexual love of older Athenian men for young boys, which he denounces as exploitative and corrupting.  He goes on to say that those who love others only physically are servile and go around like beggars after their beloved. He adds that it’s his higher love that prompts him to speak out thus against its adversary. One who loves only the body is like a person who has rented a plot of farmland rather than one who owns a holding. He wants to exploit it and gain as much as he can in the process whatever the consequences. Those who have the higher form of love, love of another’s character, resemble farmers who nurture the land they own with its long-term value in mind.

Those who are loved for their bodies alone have no incentive to develop good character, moreover. Whereas those loved for their minds are motivated to maintain their good character, and so they naturally care more about virtue.  However, says Socrates, the supreme benefit conferred by higher love, the Celestial Aphrodite, is upon the lover himself who is compelled to cultivate good character in order to win the friendship of the beloved, whose character he admires. All the virtues are encouraged by loving another because he possesses goodness.  In other words, loving goodness makes us good ourselves, and for Socrates that is love’s greatest gift to us.

If you remember, Xenophon opened the whole dialogue by saying that it was a story about good men enjoying themselves.  Although he doesn’t spell this out, Socrates himself, the supreme pimp, has also acted like the supreme lover.  He shows love for his friends by wanting to educate them about the nature of love.  He wants to them to flourish and become good men.  He’s not at all possessive but happy to match them up with other teachers he believes will benefit them in this respect.  Indeed, the dialogue ends with the drinking party coming to a close and the youthful Autolycus getting up to leave for home.  As the boy leaves with his father, he pauses for a moment, turns back, and says: “I swear, Socrates, it seems to me that truly you are a good man.”

Categories
Aristotelianism Books Philosophy Reviews

Book Review: Aristotle’s Way by Edith Hall

Aristotle’s Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life is a new book by Edith Hall, professor in the Department of Classics and Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s College, London.  As the title makes clear, it’s a book about how Aristotle’s philosophy can provide practical guidance for living, aimed at a general readership.

I really enjoyed this book and I think others will too.  I found it very readable and Hall is clearly an authority in this area.  She’s written about Aristotle in quite a conversational style but she clearly cares deeply about the material.  She mentions that she travelled to eight different places where he lived as part of her research into his life and philosophy.  She tries hard to make Aristotle’s ideas accessible to modern readers who are unfamiliar with classical literature or academic philosophy and I think she  succeeds very well.  My own area of interest is Stoic philosophy and its practical applications to modern living so the similarities and differences between the Stoics and Aristotle are particularly interesting to me.  I’ll touch on some of those aspects below as I describe a few of the key ideas from Hall’s book.

The chapter titles are fairly self-explanatory and provide a convenient overview of the main topics covered in the book:

  1. Happiness
  2. Potential
  3. Decisions
  4. Communication
  5. Self-knowledge
  6. Intentions
  7. Love
  8. Community
  9. Leisure
  10. Mortality

Hall begins by explaining that although most of us seem to agree that happiness is desirable, the word itself is somewhat ambiguous and has acquired several quite distinct meanings.  In a sense, the rest of the book can be understood as an attempt to explore Aristotle’s concept of happiness (eudaimonia) and its implications for different areas of our lives.  However, according to Hall, John F. Kennedy captured the essence of Aristotelian happiness in a single sentence: “The full use of your powers along lines of excellence in a life affording scope.”  The first and simplest point to observe about this, as Hall notes, is that Aristotelian virtue ethics is traditionally contrasted with certain forms of hedonism.  There’s more to life than the pursuit of pleasure.  A genuinely fulfilled life also requires actualizing our potential as rational beings, which is basically what Aristotle means by virtue (arete), although pleasure also plays a part in this.

Hall explains the Aristotelian principle known as the “Golden Mean”, according to which virtue lies between the two extremes of excess and deficiency, which constitute vice in relation to some character trait or quality.  For instance, courage is understood as the middle state between the vices of rashness and cowardice, the former resembling an excess of courage and the latter a deficit.  Vengeance, likewise, is okay in moderation according to this view.  As Hall puts it: “people who have no desire whatsoever to get even with those who have damaged them are either deluding themselves or have too low an estimate of their own worth.”

This differs from the ethical position adopted by Socrates, and later by the Stoics, who said that the desire for vengeance is inherently foolish and vicious.  The desire for revenge is just wrong, according to this view, even if it’s relatively moderate in nature.  For example, in Plato’s Crito, Socrates asks whether it is right, as the whole world says, to  attempt to get even by repaying evil with evil.  Doing evil, or harm, to others, he says, is the same thing as doing them an injustice, which would be wrong.

Then we ought to neither return wrong for wrong nor do evil to anyone, no matter what he may have done to us. […] Let us take as the starting point of our discussion the assumption that it is never right to do wrong or to repay wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return. (Crito, 49c)

When I studied Aristotle at Aberdeen University, a few decades ago now, Ian Fowley – an elderly philosopher who looked remarkably like Socrates – liked to describe the principle of the Golden Mean as follows…  If you were throwing a party and uncertain how many bottles of wine to purchase for your guests, Aristotle’s advice would be like saying “don’t buy too many, but don’t buy too few either – the right amount being somewhere between these two extremes”.  Perhaps that might sound wise, in a sense, but it’s a bit too vague to be of very much help when it comes to practical decision-making.

As Hall explains, Aristotle thinks we should be angry with our enemies but not too much, just the right amount.

The truly great-souled man will get to the point of serenity where he “does not bear grudges, for it is not a mark of greatness of soul to recall things against people, especially the wrongs they have done you, but rather to overlook them.” On the other hand, Aristotle does think that there is a time and a place not only for vengeful feelings such as anger, but for vengeful action. […] In the fourth book of the Nicomachean Ethics he even argues that revengeful feelings can be virtuous and rational.

The Stoics, by contrast, believed that anger is temporary madness and that the wise do not indulge in this sort of vengeance.  Stoics accept their initial feelings (propatheiai) of anger as something involuntary, natural, and morally indifferent.  However, we shouldn’t continue to fan the flames of our anger voluntary but rather learn to take a step back from it and regain our composure before deciding what action to take next.  For the Stoics, the distinction between virtue and vice is more qualitative than quantitative.  The full passion of anger is always irrational, and unphilosophical, because it entails a desire for the other person to suffer harm.  The wise man, by contrast, wishes that his enemies would improve and become wise themselves.

I find that today some people tend to be more drawn to the Stoic perspective and some to the Aristotelian way of looking at anger.  Some people just don’t get very angry, and they seem to get along fine in life.  Other people get quite angry but appear able to deal with it constructively.  What I’ve learned, though, from my experience as a cognitive therapist, though, is that strong feelings such as anger tend to introduce various cognitive and attentional biases.  These potentially hamper our ability to deliberate clearly about difficult situations and to engage in rational problem-solving.  And once we begin to entertain feelings of anger they can easily begin to skew our judgement.

I’m definitely more inclined toward the Stoic perspective, which inspired the theory and practices of modern cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy.  However, I can see the merits of both points of view, Stoic and Aristotelian, and I think they provide a great opportunity for discussion, comparing them to one another and teasing out the subtle differences.   However, Hall’s short appraisal of Stoicism is surprisingly negative and somewhat dismissive:

Other ancient philosophical systems have found advocates in modern times, especially the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus. But Stoicism does not encourage the same joie de vivre as Aristotle’s ethics. It is a rather pessimistic and grim affair. It requires the suppression of emotions and physical appetites. It recommends the resigned acceptance of misfortune, rather than active, practical engagement with the fascinating fine-grained business of everyday living and problem-solving. It doesn’t leave enough room for hope, human agency or human intolerance of misery. It denounces pleasure for its own sake. It is tempting to agree with Cicero, who asked, “What? Could a Stoic arouse enthusiasm? He will rather immediately drown any enthusiasm even if he received someone full of zeal.”

I think these are criticisms worth hearing and each of these points about Stoicism deserves to be answered.  For example, you might say Stoicism lacks joie de vivre, although a profound type of joy (chara) is actually one of the core positive emotions (eupatheiai) endorsed by the Stoics.  For example, Marcus Aurelius frequently refers to such joy.  He even specifies several psychologically insightful means of cultivating this healthy emotion.  I doubt most modern followers of Stoicism would say that Stoicism is any more “grim and pessimistic” a philosophy than Aristotle’s is.  It doesn’t really advocate the “suppression of emotions” any more than cognitive therapy does but rather the transformation of unhealthy emotions into more natural and healthy ones by disputing the irrational beliefs underlying them.

The ancient Stoics also didn’t really recommend the “resigned acceptance of misfortune”, in the negative sense Hall appears to have in mind.  Rather they taught that emotional acceptance of events beyond our direct control should be combined with a commitment to practical action in accord with justice  and other ethical values – something Epictetus calls the “Discipline of Action”.  For instance, when the Marcomanni and their allies launched a massive invasion of Pannonia, and penetrated into Italy, the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius didn’t respond with “resigned acceptance” and inaction.  Instead, he “donned the military cape and boots”, rode out from Rome to lead the counter-offensive, and ended up commanding the largest army ever massed on a Roman frontier throughout a series of wars that lasted nearly a decade.  Indeed, the Stoics were well-known for actively (even stubbornly) engaging in various political struggles and military enterprises, often risking their lives in doing so.  They were definitely not passive doormats.

Likewise, the Stoic attitude toward pleasure is more nuanced than Hall perhaps implies.  Pleasure (hedone) isn’t “denounced” but classed as an “indifferent”, neither good nor bad.  In fact, denouncing pleasure as bad would be a fundamental mistake according to the Stoics.   On the other hand, it’s true that indulging excessively in pleasure by treating it as something more important than wisdom or virtue was a vice denounced by the Stoics.   On the other hand, as noted earlier, the Stoics place considerable importance on a healthy form of cheerfulness or joy (chara), which complements the exercise of wisdom and virtue.  So the Stoics weren’t joyless; it would be much closer to the truth to say they thought we shouldn’t treat bodily pleasures (and things like flattery) as if they were the goal of life.  These pleasures aren’t bad in themselves but rather craving them to excess is a vice, especially if we do so at the expense of more important things.

Of course, there are some ambiguities in these ancient texts and there’s scope for reading them in more than one way.  I’m somewhat more inclined to favour Stoicism and read it in a sympathetic light.  Hall’s bound to do the same with Aristotle.  For example, she acknowledges she’s somewhat sidelining his problematic views about the inferiority of slaves and women, although this arguably has wider implications for the modern reception of his ethical philosophy.  I think the most important thing is that dialogue continues between Stoic, Aristotelian, and other philosophical perspectives.  We have the most to gain by encouraging an intelligent comparison between these ethical perspectives, especially given the growing number of modern readers interested in applying them in their daily lives.  As it happens, Marcus Aurelius, though a Stoic, mentions Aristotelian ideas favourably and one of his closest friends and advisors, Claudius Severus, was an Aristotelian philosopher.  Marcus praised Severus in The Meditations, mentioning how grateful he was for the opportunity to learn about politics from him.  Indeed, I suspect that whether someone engages with Stoicism or Aristotelianism, or Epicureanism, they’re likely to end up better off than someone who doesn’t think about ethical philosophy at all but rather goes along uncritically accepting some of the values prevailing in modern society.

I want to talk briefly about an Aristotelian concept that’s long been associated with psychotherapy.  Hall mentions that Aristotle’s Politics refers to “a certain catharsis and alleviation accompanied by pleasure”, which has been taken as the inspiration for Freud’s theory of emotional catharsis.  A “cathartic” in medicine is a purgative, a drug that supposedly cleanses poisons from the body by inducing defecation, a bit like a laxative.  Freud originally believed that venting strong emotions had a cathartic effect, somehow purging them from our minds.  However, although he endorsed emotional catharsis in his first book on psychotherapy, Studies on Hysteria (1895), Freud actually abandoned the method before long.  He concluded that venting alone was of little therapeutic benefit unless accompanied by insight into the source of our emotions.  In the 1960s and 1970s, several psychotherapists, such as Arthur Janov the founder of Primal Scream therapy, attempted to rehabilitate the notion of catharsis as a psychological therapy.  However, it ultimately it failed to gain clinical support.  Indeed, Freud and Janov developed their ideas without any scientific evidence, prior to the use of clinical trials in psychotherapy.

It’s beyond question that venting (catharsis) of emotions such as grief or anger often makes clients temporarily feel better.  However, feeling better and getting better are two very different things.  Researchers have been unable to find robust support for emotional catharsis having genuine long-term psychological benefits.  Indeed, in relation to both grief and anger, studies have shown that repeated venting is sometimes more likely to do people more harm than good.  It seems that venting an emotion can simply reinforce it, like exercising a muscle or repeating a habit, rather than “getting it out of our system”.  In other words, if Aristotle really believed in a psychotherapeutic mechanism of catharsis, as Freud initially did, it seems he may have been mistaken.  Perhaps his Golden Mean could be applied here: a little bit of emotional venting is natural and harmless, and suppressing our feelings is often unhealthy, but venting too much or too often isn’t usually therapeutic also be unhealthy.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed this book and I’d definitely recommend it to other people.  Even though I’m more partial to Stoicism, I found it interesting and valuable to compare what I’ve learned from Stoicism and cognitive therapy with what Hall says about the ethical and psychological guidance found in Aristotle’s philosophy.  It’s very easy to read and that’s quite an achievement with a topic of this nature.  I don’t remember Aristotle ever being quite as much fun as this when I was a student.  It does read like a mixture of what you’d expect from a conventional self-help book and what you might obtain from a good introduction to classical philosophy.  These elements are combined very well, though, and I think it will satisfy people approaching the book from different perspectives: whether they’re more into ancient philosophy or the self-improvement aspect.

Categories
Socrates

Socrates and Theodote the Courtesan

Xenophon says that for a time an exceptionally beautiful courtesan (hetaira) called Theodote lived in Athens, who had attracted a lot of attention.  She had become something of a celebrity, highly sought after as a model for painters.  One of his friends mentioned to Socrates that her beauty was “beyond description”.  Socrates replied that in that case they should pay her a visit in person because no clear idea can be formed about what is beyond description from a mere verbal description, such as hearsay provides.

The friends went and observed Theodote as she was posing, partially clothed, for an artist.  Socrates started a conversation by asking, in typically paradoxical fashion, whether the men should be more grateful to Theodote for allowing them to gaze upon her beauty or whether she should be more grateful to them for admiring her.  “I suggest that, if the display has been more to her advantage, she ought to be grateful to us, and if it is more to ours, we ought to be grateful to her.”  He then argues that whereas Theodote enjoys their admiration and will later benefit from them spreading word of her beauty, they will go away with their passions inflamed, suffering from desire.  So he concludes: “The natural inference from this is that we are performing the service and she is receiving it.”  Theodote seems amused and jokes that in that case she should indeed be grateful for them gawping at her.

Theodote was clearly doing well for herself.  She was dressed in fine clothing, as was her mother, and the several maids who attended her.  Moreover, the house in which they resided was very lavish.  Socrates asks her how she supports herself in such fine style and Theodote replies “If anyone gets friendly with me and wants to be generous, that’s how I get my living.”  Xenophon leaves this unsaid but Socrates himself was apparently supported by a small group of wealthy patrons.  The similarities between Theodote’s situation and his own appear to be on his mind as he continues:

Good heavens, it’s a splendid asset to have a flock of friends – much better than having a flock of sheep and goats and cattle.  But tell me, do you leave it to chance whether a friend wings his way toward you, like a fly, or do you devise something yourself?

Thedote says she doesn’t know what he means.  Spiders spin webs to catch flies and humans likewise set traps to snare rabbits and other animals, says Socrates.  However, friends are the most valuable prey of all and therefore require a more subtle hunting method.  Nevertheless, he also says that Theodote could support herself by attracting friends even more naturally than a spider spinning a web to catch flies.

Socrates explains how hunters use different types of dogs to sniff out hares and chase them down and set up nets to entangle them.  He says Theodote should provide herself with a human hound who would track down “men of wealth and good taste” and drive them into her nets.  “Nets!”, she exclaims.  “What nets have I got?”

One, certainly which is very close-enfolding: your body. And in it is your mind, which teaches you how to look charming and talk gaily, and tells you that you must give a warm welcome to an attentive lover, but bolt the door against a selfish one; that, if a lover falls ill, you must look after him devotedly; that, if he has a stroke of luck, you must share his pleasure enthusiastically; and that, if he cares for you deeply, you must gratify him wholeheartedly. As for loving, I am sure that you know how to love not only passively, but with real affection; and you convince your lovers that you are fond of them, I know, not by words but by deeds.

Socrates is describing the arts of love employed by a sophisticated courtesan.  Theodote, however, denies using any such methods, perhaps feeling it makes her appear somewhat manipulative.  Socrates therefore responds:

Then again it’s much better to keep one’s human relationships natural and right. You can’t capture or keep a friend by force; but by showing the creature kindness and giving it pleasure, you can both catch it and keep it by you.

Theodote is much happier to agree with this way of putting things.  Socrates translates his advice into the following practical guideline.  When people care for you, you should only make such demands of them as they can satisfy without too much trouble.  You should then seek to repay them for their favours.  In this way, they will become attached to you and continue to love you in the longer-term, acting with generosity toward you.  And you’ll please them the most if you bestow your favours on them only when they desire them enough to ask.

Hunger, said Socrates elsewhere, is the best relish, and here he repeats his view that we should only eat when genuinely hungry.  Likewise, he elsewhere says that sexual desire should only be satisfied when it arises naturally.  So his advice to Theodote appears to be that she shouldn’t give herself too readily to her clients for sex but rather allow their desire for her time to grow stronger, perhaps developing into love.  Theodote asks how exactly she’s supposed to arouse such hunger.  Socrates spells out that he’s telling her to behave more modestly and not to hint at offering sexual favours to her admirers until the right time, “holding back until their need is as great as possible”.

Theodote asks whether Socrates would help her to hunt for friends, an allusion to the fact he elsewhere refers to himself as being a sort of pimp.  He says he’d be pleased to do so, if she can persuade him, and Theodote replies “Then come and see me often.”  Socrates jokes, though, that it’s not easy for him to find the time because he’s busy with his own flock of admirers, “who will never let me leave them by day or night, because they are learning from me about love-charms and spells.”  This catches Theodote’s interest and she wants to learn about love charms from Socrates if he’s serious.

Socrates jokes that it’s because of his love spells that his faithful disciples Apollodorus and Antisthenes never leave his side, and Cebes and Simmias travel all the way from Thebes to visit him.  “You may be sure that these things don’t happen without a lot of love-charms and spells and magic wheels.”  (Magic wheels were a specific type of love charm invented by Aphrodite according to legend.)

Theodote asks Socrates to lend her his magic wheel so that she can spin it first of all to place him under her spell.  “Certainly not”, he replies, “I don’t want to be drawn to you; I want you to come to me.” Theodote says “Very well, I will, but mind to let me in.”  Socrates jokes that he will unless he has someone with him that he likes better.

Socrates is alluding throughout this dialogue to his claim to be a pimp or matchmaker for the virtuous.  He’s only willing to make introductions when he believes that someone genuinely deserves friends because of the potential for goodness that they exhibit, though. He’s also hinting, somewhat opaquely, at the notion, repeated elsewhere, that the most powerful love spell consists in actually showing love and kindness toward others.  Over four centuries later, Seneca mentions this Socratic definition of the most powerful love charm, although strangely he attributes it to a Stoic called Hecato:

If you ask how one can make oneself a friend quickly, I will tell you […].  Hecato, says: “I can show you a philtre, compounded without drugs, herbs, or any witch’s incantation: ‘If you would be loved, love.’”

In Xenophon’s Symposium and Memorabilia, Socrates likewise talks about this idea that exhibiting love or friendship toward others works like a charm if we want to experience love in return.  It seems closely-related to his more general advice that we should be as we wish to appear in life.  If you want to appear lovable, and be loved by others, then you should actually make yourself deserving of their affection by taking the initiative and showing love and kindness toward them first.

Categories
Books Marcus Aurelius Stoicism

Jon Meacham on Marcus Aurelius

While I was researching my new book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius, I stumbled across a Newsweek article about Marcus Aurelius, from 2010, written by author and political commentator Jon Meacham.  Meacham won a Pulitzer prize in 2009 for his biography of US president Andrew Jackson.

Meacham’s article, A Case for Optimistic Stoicism, was inspired by the attempted Al Qaeda bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253, which was bound from Amsterdam to Detroit Metropolitan Airport in the US.  I wanted to write a little about this article because I think it deserves to be read and because it seems to me that Meacham has actually understood the essence of Stoicism better than many others who have attempted to write about it.  Though he’s not a scholar of this particular subject he clearly “gets it” and the Stoic doctrine he gets is one that’s really quite central to the whole philosophy.

Meacham was reading the Gregory Hays translation of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius when he heard about the attack.  He was immediately struck by the relevance of Marcus’ Stoic reflections as America faced the renewed threat of terrorism.  The following words in particular resonated with him:

If you’ve seen the present then you’ve seen everything—as it’s been since the beginning, as it will be forever.  The same substance, the same form. All of it.

Meacham sounded jaded by the “mindlessly divided” nature of the political response to the incident.  The same old finger-pointing and political point-scoring.  Politicians using a threat as an opportunity to squabble among themselves rather than addressing the real issues at stake.

He reasoned that threat is always present, lurking somewhere during times of apparent peace.  Americans were deluding themselves to think otherwise.  Crises are inevitable.  With The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius in his hands, Meacham could only wish that instead of the embarrassing display of Democrats and Republicans scrambling to opportunistically exploit the event Americans should learn, like the Roman emperor, to embrace a philosophy of optimistic Stoicism.

Meacham understands Marcus Aurelius.  He says that a proper grasp of the Stoic philosophy of The Meditations would require adopting a world view which calmly accepts the stubborn intransigence of human affairs, and their darker side, but also retains a hopeful sense of their possibilities.  Not just Stoic acceptance of a passive kind, as people sometimes assume, but an attitude of hopeful and determined action.  True Stoics balance resignation and calm realism, the Stoic Discipline of Desire, with relentless idealism and a serious commitment to moral principles, the Discipline of Action.  That paradox is the cornerstone of the entire philosophy.  Stoics quietly accept life’s misfortunes without complaint but they nevertheless remain committed to doing good, for the common welfare of mankind.

As Meacham notes, Marcus Aurelius wrote that human beings were made to help one another – a theme that he returns to many times throughout The Meditations.  The wise man, Marcus says, can be recognized by the affection he exhibits toward his neighbours, and through his humility and truthfulness.  The only true good is virtue, which leads to universally admired character traits such as justice, self-control, courage, and freedom.  The only true evil is vice, the opposite frame of mind.

Meacham also spots the Roman emperor’s striking remark that we cannot go around expecting to achieve Plato’s ideal republic in political life – it’s unrealistic to demand that we live in a Utopia.  Nevertheless, says Marcus, rather than simply abandoning our ideals – like so many people do when they become disillusioned with modern politics –the Stoics advise us to work toward justice and our political ideals more patiently.  We should accept the imperfections around us while maintaining our goal of making progress toward something far better, even if it’s only one small step at a time.  Indeed, Marcus says that this Stoic willingness to keep working steadily toward a beautiful ideal while nevertheless accepting reality warts and all, is the secret of fulfilment in human life.

Meacham realized as he watched the news that day that despite the duty of government to strive for its people’s safety, America was facing the horrifying reality of a war without end against enemies who could appear anywhere:

No matter how many camps we blow up, no matter how many operatives we kill or imprison, and certainly no matter how much screening we do at airports, we will never render America totally safe. No matter. We must press forward on all fronts. The perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. […] As Marcus Aurelius would understand, a never-ending war is not a war we should not fight: it is just a war that never ends. The sooner we accept this, the better.

That’s what I would describe as a philosophical attitude toward the stark reality of terrorism.  One type of folly denies the reality of these threats and buries its head in the sand.  The opposite type of folly accepts them but exaggerates our inability to cope and throws its arms up in the air in despair.  What people find so difficult to understand about Stoicism is that it does neither of these foolish things.  Stoics like the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius could walk and chew gum.  They could calmly accept adversity while nevertheless patiently fighting back against it, even though the odds seemed stacked against them or the battle seemed interminable.  Life, as Marcus said, is warfare.  It never ends.  The good man accepts this, without complaint, and he remains at his post anyway, standing guard against the enemy.

In 1712, Thomas Addison wrote a play called Cato, a Tragedy, which celebrated the great Roman Stoic hero, Cato of Utica.  It contains many Stoic themes including the striking lines:

Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we’ll do more, Sempronius – we’ll deserve it.

George Washington was reputedly so inspired by this play that he had it staged for his army camped at Valley Forge.  That was the philosophy he felt they needed to inspire them.  We don’t give up just because we’re facing an overwhelming threat.  The goal of life isn’t to win, because that’s not always up to us, but rather to deserve to win, something eminently under our control.  We can be victorious over fortune in that respect, right now, even when engaged in a war without end.  As soon as we turn our back on the true goal, though, we’ve already lost everything for which it’s worth putting up a fight in the first place.

Categories
Marcus Aurelius Stoicism

Writing “How to Think Like a Roman Emperor”

My new book about Stoicism comes out soon so I thought I’d say a bit about the process of writing it.  (Sometimes people ask me how I ended up writing these books or what the process is like.)  The book’s called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius.  You can pre-order it now from Barnes and Noble and other online bookstores.  (Incidentally, I’m writing this blog post during a layover at Frankfurt airport on the way from Athens to Toronto – I thought I’d try to do something constructive with the time!)

Let’s start at the beginning…  When I was a little boy I really wanted to be a writer.  At primary school in Scotland, when I was about ten years old, we used to write short stories.  The kids would get to vote for which ones the wanted to hear each week and the “winner” would stand at the front of the class and read their creation aloud.  Mine were quite popular so the other kids kept asking me to do more.  It was kind of addictive.  And I wasn’t much good at anything else, to be honest.

Somewhere along the way I lost interest in writing, though.  Or rather I became more interested in reading philosophy.  Then I wanted to become a counsellor or a psychotherapist.  So after finishing my degree in philosophy at the University of Aberdeen, I moved to London and before long started working as a counsellor in high schools and with a youth drugs project.  After a few years I became a psychotherapist with a private clinical practice in Harley Street.  Then one day someone called me out of the blue and asked me to run a training course for other therapists.  So I wound up as a trainer and for about fifteen years, in addition to treating clients, I ran a training school in London teaching other therapists, counsellors, and life coaches.

I’ve been studying, writing about, and talking about Stoicism for roughly twenty years as well.  I’ve written five books, on philosophy and psychotherapy, and dozens of articles in magazines and journals.  The books were all quite different.  First of all, I edited the complete writings of James Braid, the Scot who invented hypnotism.  My first book as an author, though, was just an attempt to make sense out of hundreds of pages of notes I’d compiled about Stoicism and cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT).  (At one point my Psion computer died and I completely lost years of notes – poof!)  Then I was asked to write a self-help book on emotional resilience for Hodder’s Teach Yourself series, which follows quite a strictly organized format.  That was good but it didn’t really allow me to write in my own style.  I also wrote a book called Stoicism and the Art of Happiness for the same series.  And a manual for the evidence-based practice of clinical hypnosis, based on a cognitive-behavioural approach.  I put a lot of work into that but it wasn’t the sort of book that I really wanted to write either.

The first book proposal that I ever wrote was for a book called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, which the publisher turned down twice.  I asked them what sort of books they wanted people to write and they replied saying they wanted a book called The Philosophy of CBT.  So that’s how my first book (as an author) came about.  (Incidentally, you hear a lot about authors struggling to get their first book deal but publishers are sometimes begging for people to write books on certain subjects and can’t find anyone to do it.)  Over a decade later, though, I still felt the Roman Emperor title was good and had a ring to it.  So I decided to write it.  There are already several good introductions to Stoicism and books on Stoicism as self-help.  I wanted to write about Stoicism but it had to be a different sort of book.

Since she was about three or four years old, I’ve been telling my daughter, Poppy, stories about Greek heroes and philosophers.  I realized that other people liked these stories too.  In the ancient world, philosophical wisdom was often communicated in the form of anecdotes about the lives of famous philosophers such as Socrates and Diogenes the Cynic.  For example, we have a treasure trove of this stuff in a book called The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius.  So I decided to write a book about Stoicism that focused more on stories about the lives of philosophers.

Marcus Aurelius is the Stoic about whom we know the most.  That’s simply because he was a Roman emperor.  There are several histories (Cassius Dio, Herodian, the Historia Augusta) that survive today and describe his reign, and a few other minor sources.  However, I found it frustrating that modern biographies of Marcus didn’t really try to interpret his life in relation to his philosophy, which we know so much about from his private notes The Meditations.  So I finally set about writing a book called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, which describes events from Marcus Aurelius’ life and links them to concepts and practices from Stoic philosophy.  I also drew on my training in psychotherapy, especially cognitive-behavioral therapy  (CBT), to help me explain how these could help people today.

So how did I actually go about writing the book?  What was the process like?  Well, I’d already been researching this subject for about twenty years: gatherings notes and writing shorter pieces, giving talks, etc.  I began by writing two sample chapters based on major events in Marcus’ life to see if I could make them work as stories: the Antonine Plague and the civil war with Avidius Cassius.  I wanted to stick as closely as possible to the historical information available but didn’t want to spoil a good story.  So I inserted pieces of dialogue or minor details where necessary and in cases where there’s some ambiguity in the historical account I’d settle on one interpretation rather than disrupting the narrative by worrying about which was right.  My goal wasn’t to “do history” but to inspire readers and provide them with one possible account of Marcus’ life that would help them visualize his philosophy more clearly as a way of life.  So I’d describe these as works of historical or biographical fiction, albeit so faithful to the surviving Roman histories that they’re probably about 99% history and about 1% fiction.

I also compiled a huge document organizing all the key information about Marcus’ life that could potentially be used to write the book.   I planned everything in (too much) detail.  Then I started again from scratch, confident that I had all the key facts, that I could now picture the overall structure of the book, and that I could weave the events into stories, which I’d describe as a series of historical vignettes about major events in Marcus’ life.  I reread The Meditations several times in different translations, brushing up on my (pretty sketchy) ancient Greek and studying the parallel Greek and English texts to tease out subtle connotations where possible that would complement my narrative.  Sometimes people ask me how many times I’ve read The Meditations.  I’ve honestly no idea; I’ve lost count – lots and lots of times.  I also read all the available English biographies of Marcus Aurelius’ life and made detailed notes on anything that could be incorporated into the book I was planning.  (One of my favourite books about Marcus is an obscure 18th century French work of historical fiction called The Eulogium on Marcus Aurelius.)

I find it difficult to write at home so I’d often go away for a week or more and stay in the countryside or anywhere I could focus completely on my research and writing.  I try to minimise distractions so I’d eat very simple food each day that didn’t require much preparation, e.g., boiled eggs, peanuts, coffee and apples.  Sometimes I booked into AirBNBs that were actually just a fifteen minute or so walk from where I live because I found that being in another environment helped me focus even if it were just a few streets from home.  It also gave my girlfriend a break because I’m pretty sure she was fed up hearing about the Antonine Plague and intricate details about Roman military formations.

I find that after months of writing it becomes difficult to concentrate when reading through a chapter for the zillionth time.  So I would print each chapter and read it aloud from the hard copy.   For some reason, I find that timing myself reading or writing with a stopwatch also helps remind me to stay focused.  When the final draft of the manuscript is nearly ready I like to read the entire thing cover to cover to make sure that the whole book is coherent and there’s no unintentional repetition.  Sadl, though, that’s beyond my ability in terms of concentration.  So I paid a local bartender who’s interested in philosophy, Maria, to read it to me while I made notes on a second paper copy.  After each chapter, she’d also silently mark up a printout to indicate which parts she felt were good and which might potentially be removed.  Her comments were very helpful.  (Sometimes I’d even read a chapter to our dog just to trick myself into concentrating for a bit longer, although Mookie wasn’t able to offer very helpful feedback.) My editor and agent also helped a lot with advice and feedback, of course.

I’ve practised self-hypnosis for many years, since I was about fifteen years old.  So I made a recording that I would listen to for twenty minutes each day, designed to help me become more focused on writing and to view the book from different perspectives to help my creativity, etc.  I don’t think I’d have managed to write this book without using that method.

Regarding the content, I wanted to begin the book with something dramatic.  After some initial thought, I realized, paradoxically, that I should open with the death of Marcus Aurelius.  Then I could return to his childhood and work through the major events of his life as if he were remembering them in subsequent chapters.  That created a problem, though.  How would the book end?  I started writing before I knew the answer to that question because I felt sure that somehow a solution would present itself along the way.  And it did.  At least, I found a way to end the book that satisfied me as the author.  Spoiler alert: The final chapter is written in a very different style from the rest of the book.  It was actually intended to be read aloud or listened to in an audio recording.  It’s intentionally written to resemble a guided meditation exercise.  I read it aloud many times until I was completely satisfied with how it sounded.  It weaves together many different Stoic ideas from Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, as well as a few from other sources.

So I hope you enjoy what I’ve written.  It was a long journey.  At times I felt quite exhausted but I’m glad I made it to the end.  I’m confident that I’ve created something very different from anything I’ve ever written before.  And anyone can read this book.  If you’re completely new to Stoicism it will provide you with a compelling introduction, and inspire you, I hope, in the way that only the life of a great philosopher, like Marcus, really can.  If you’ve read lots of books on Stoicism I’m sure you’ll find this is an original perspective and that it contains many details about Marcus’ life and his philosophy that aren’t well-known.  I know from my research that people who read this book find that they’re able to get a lot more out of reading The Meditations.  It makes me very satisfied to think that a book which has already benefited so many people so profoundly could be introduced to the reader afresh by exposing new layers of meaning.

If you like the sound of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius you can pre-order it now from Barnes and Noble and other online bookstores.  So buy a copy if you want to encourage me to go through the whole process again next year by writing another book!

Categories
Socrates Stoicism

Video: Four Emotional Resilience Strategies from The Stoic Socrates

Categories
Socrates Stoicism

Video: The Choice of Hercules

Releasing a video today of me reciting The Choice of Hercules the famous speech of Prodicus, retold by Socrates, which inspired Zeno to embrace the life of a philosopher and then to go on and found the Stoic school.

 

 

Categories
Books Reviews Stoicism

Book Review: Unshakeable Freedom by Chuck Chakrapani

Unshakeable Freedom:Ancient Stoic Secrets Applied to Modern Life (2016) by Chakrapani is a recent book on Stoicism, written as in introduction to applying the philosophy as a form of self-help or self-improvement.  Chuck’s also published his own editions of several Stoic classics and a book about the origins of the philosophy called A Fortunate Storm (2016).

The first thing I wanted to say is that this book is probably one of the best introductions to Stoicism that I’ve read.  I think it’s very well-written.  The philosophy seems crystal clear and the use of examples from various famous philosophers and modern role models makes it engaging and easy to read.  I really think Chuck has a way of expressing Stoic ideas that’s very clear and concise.  I would definitely recommend that people who are new to the subject start with a book like this.  I read the whole book in an afternoon, on my Chromebook Flip, while wandering around Athens.  (Between chapters, incidentally, I had a chance to visit the Benaki Museum, where they have a statue of an unnamed Athenian philosopher from the reign of Marcus Aurelius.)

I find that some self-improvement books have one idea, which they flog to death.  Chuck’s book manages, though, to present lots of different ideas very simply and effectively.  Some books on Stoicism also short-change the reader, I feel, when it comes to the actual psychological techniques used in the ancient philosophy.  Chuck includes quite a variety of Stoic exercises, though, both old and new.  I’m not sure how he managed to cover so much ground so well in so few pages but he did, and I find that very impressive.  He even includes a review of the ground he’s covered, and the exercises, in the final chapter.

The whole book revolves around the central theme of inner freedom, and what that means for Stoics.  For instance, the six “Big Ideas” he lists in the book include:

  1. Problems are only problems if you believe they are.
  2. Leave your past behind.
  3. Don’t let the indifferents rob your freedom.
  4. Where there is fear, freedom is not.
  5. You can never lose anything because you don’t own anything.
  6. Life is a festival.  Enjoy it now.

The twelve psychological exercises he includes are called:

  1. The anticipatory prep technique (“Morning Meditation”)
  2. Course correction (“End-of-day Meditation”)
  3. Passion counter
  4. Pause and examine
  5. Two handles (not to be confused with fork handles)
  6. Entitlement challenge
  7. Praemeditatio malorum (“Negative Visualization”)
  8. Impersonal projection
  9. Cosmic view
  10. Marcus’ Nine
  11. Sunbeam visualization
  12. South Indian monkey trap visualization

I also wanted to mention that despite being a fairly simple (I suppose “non-academic”) introduction this book presents Stoicism in a pretty accurate manner.  Some of the introductory books and articles really bastardize Stoicism pretty badly, unfortunately, and that spreads a lot of confusion among people in online communities.  But Chuck’s book is spot on because it’s written by someone who actually cares about the philosophy and has taken time to try to understand how to live in accord with its principles.  I always feel you can tell whether an author is just winging it or if they’ve really put their own ideas into practice.  A lot of self-help books, including some on Stoicism, don’t pass the smell test in that regard.  You can tell that Chuck’s book is based on his experience of Stoicism, though, and that he’s sincere in his attempt to look at life through a Stoic lens.

He addresses some common misconceptions.  For example, he makes it clear that Stoicism isn’t about repressing all of our emotions but rather replacing unhealthy emotions with healthy ones.  And he clearly explains the tricky Stoic concept of “preferred indifferents”.  Although things like health, wealth and reputation are “indifferent” in the sense that they don’t contribute to the goal of life nevertheless it’s natural and rational to prefer health over sickness, wealth over poverty, and so on, within reasonable bounds.  Stoics do care about these “externals”, in a sense, but not enough to get upset about losing them.  Many people ignore that concept although it’s really the very essence of Stoic Ethics and therefore the cornerstone of the entire philosophy.   That leads them to exaggerate the “indifference” of Stoicism in a way that invites criticism (and is really more like earlier schools of philosophy such as Cynicism).  Chuck’s book presents a more accurate, balanced, workable, and realistic version of Stoicism, though.  That’s another reason why I think it’s a good introduction.

So I better conclude…  I once had a friend who worked in the British Library who thought that there were far too many books in the world and it would be better if most of them were just shredded.  Although I can’t bring myself to advocate book burning nevertheless I have felt myself becoming ever so slightly more sympathetic toward his point of view over time.  I’m in good company at least, because our Stoic friend Marcus Aurelius also thought he’d do well to put his books away for a change and get on with life.  I’ve had to read too many books as a student and then for my research as a writer and trainer.  This one was not a chore, though, but a pleasure to read.

Professional film critics, I notice, are rather preoccupied with the length of films.  Just as the time flies by in some movies, though, some books are quicker and easier than others to read.  I read this book in a few hours because it was worth reading, and a pleasure to read, and not overly-long either.  That matters to me because I know that if I recommend The Road Less Travelled to someone, they’re unlikely to get past the first few chapters.  (And that’s a hugely overrated book anyway, IMHO.)  Chuck’s book is a page-turner that gives you more bang for your buck.  Sorry to have wasted your time but it’s probably easier to read than my review to be honest!  I know that if I can persuade someone to read this – and they should – then they’ll probably get through it in a few hours, enjoy the whole thing, and come away with an accurate and workable idea of Stoic philosophy.  So please do just go and read it. 

(After watching this video of Chuck talking at Stoicon in Toronto….)