These are my rough notes for the “Stoicism & Love” workshop I did at the Stoicism Today conference in London, 2014…

To recap from earlier: Christopher Gill mentioned that some modern commentators, such as Richard Sorabji and Martha Nussbaum, question whether there’s much room for love in Stoicism, which they describe as involving “detachment” from other people.  He notes that this was not a criticism that was commonly levelled against Stoics in the ancient world, though.  The Stoics saw themselves, and I think were generally seen by others, as a philosophical school advocating a kind of affection for the rest of mankind, bound up with what is often called a philanthropic and cosmopolitan attitude.  Chris notes that the Stoics do challenge us nevertheless to love others in a way that is brutally honest and realistic about their mortality and our own, the transience of our relationships, and our lack of control over others.

So, on the one hand, many people, and possibly even a few academics, assume that Stoicism and love are somehow incompatible or at least in conflict.  On the other hand, Marcus Aurelius, in the very first chapter of The Meditations, describes the Stoic ideal as being “free from passions and yet full of love” – meaning irrational and unhealthy passions.  I think he later uses a similar expression to describe his own goal in life as a Stoic.  Marcus actually says he should love other people, not just superficially, but from the very bottom of his heart (Meditations, 10.1).  He seems pretty serious about the whole idea of loving mankind as if they were his brothers.  Likewise, Cicero explicitly says of the Stoic concept of love:

The Stoics actually both say that the wise man will experience love, and they define love itself as the effort to make a friendship from the semblance of beauty. (Tusculan Disputations, 4.72)

I’m pretty sure that by “the semblance of beauty” he means here inner beauty or virtue, as Socrates and the Stoics understood it.  So the Stoic Sage definitely experiences love, and presumably loves the virtuous in particular, although the “seeds” of wisdom and virtue are within everyone.  So he potentially loves all mankind in that respect.

Indeed, to start with, I’d just like to point out that philosophy, of course means “love of wisdom”, and that it seems to me the Stoics were very aware of that meaning and took it fairly literally.  Wisdom is more or less synonymous with virtue in Stoicism and love of wisdom is therefore synonymous with love of virtue, which is something the Stoics certainly appear to advocate.  Indeed, the supreme “healthy passion” they describe, rational “Joy” (chara), is basically a kind of rejoicing in the presence of virtue.  So ancient Stoicism entailed rejoicing in virtue and, literally, loving wisdom – and I think those themes are pretty clear in some of the texts, especially Marcus Aurelius.

In the translations of Marcus Aurelius I checked, incidentally, the word “love” is used about 40 times, far more than “virtue” for instance.  He talks about love all the time.  The Stoic literature is actually full of positive references to love, friendship, affection, and similar concepts.  Some of them very emphatic about the central role of “love for humanity” in Stoicism.  For example, Seneca wrote:

No school has more goodness and gentleness; none has more love for human beings, nor more attention to the common good.  (Seneca, On Clemency, 3.3)

Big Questions from Thursday’s Stoic-Week Discussion

1. What does Marcus mean by being full of love, or natural affection, and yet free from (irrational or unhealthy) passions?
2. To what extent does love or natural affection seem to play a role in Stoic philosophy?

Although some people perhaps read the Stoics in different ways on this point, Pierre Hadot thought Stoic philanthropy and cosmopolitanism were very similar to the Christian notion of brotherly-love:

It cannot, then, be said that “loving one’s neighbour as oneself” is a specifically Christian invention.  Rather, it could be maintained that the motivation of Stoic love is the same as that of Christian love. […] Even the love of one’s enemies is not lacking in Stoicism. (Hadot, 1998, p. 231)

There are many Stoic passages that support this, e.g., Marcus wrote:

It is a man’s especial privilege to love even those who stumble.  And this love follows as soon as you reflect that they are akin to you and that they do wrong involuntarily and through ignorance, and that within a little while both they and you will be dead; and this above all, that the man has done you no harm; for he has not made your “ruling faculty” worse than it was before. (Meditations, 7.22)

So the Stoic loves others because they are his kin, as citizens of the cosmos, and rational beings.  What if they don’t love us back, though?  The Earl of Shaftesbury wrote that Stoic love was “disinterested” and not dependent on reciprocation from the people loved:

Come on, let us see now if thou canst love disinterestedly.  “Thanks my good kinsman (brother, sister, friend), for giving me so generous a part, that I can love though not beloved.” (Shaftesbury, 2005, p. 108)

There’s a nice passage in Seneca (Letters, 9) where he says that the Stoic wise man naturally prefers to have friends but that he doesn’t need or crave them, and he is perfectly contented within himself if fate denies him the company of other people.

Big Questions from Thursday’s Stoic-Week Discussion

1. How does love for others in Stoicism compare to the idea of love for others in Christianity, compassion in Buddhism, or brotherly-love in other philosophical or religious traditions?
2. Also: How does Stoic love compare to the way romantic love tends to be portrayed in Hollywood films or in romantic novels?

The Stoics emphasise the concept of “natural affection”, the kind of love a parent has for their children, as the basis of their ethics.  Shaftesbury calls this attitude, extended to everyone as fellow citizens of the cosmos, Stoic “philanthropy” or love of mankind:

What is it to have Natural Affection?  Not that which is only towards relations, but towards all mankind; to be truly philanthrôpos [philanthropic, a lover of mankind], neither to scoff, nor hate, nor be impatient with them, nor abominate them, nor overlook them; and to pity in a manner and love those that are the greatest miscreants, those that are most furious against thyself in particular, and at the time when they are most furious? (Shaftesbury, 2005, p. 1)

Shaftesbury compares this Stoic attitude of natural affection for mankind to the loving attitude of a mother or nurse toward a sickly child.  The Stoics often sought to emulate Zeus, as their ideal, and the paternal affection Zeus was supposed to have for mankind, his children.  Musonius Rufus therefore describes the Stoic Zeus as the patron god of friendship and familial affection.  For the Stoics, to be philanthropic, to love mankind as one’s brothers and fellow world-citizens, is to be godlike, in a sense.

Musonius famously argued that women as well as men should study Stoic philosophy.  He claimed that Stoicism would actually make women more able to properly love their children, rather than somehow repressing their affection for them.  “Who, more than she [a female Stoic] would love her children more than life?” (Lectures, 3).  Indeed there are several places where Stoics suggest it would be fundamentally unnatural to suppress feelings such as parental love, and therefore irrational to do so.  Epictetus actually says that “when a child is born it is no longer in our power not to love it or care for it”; it’s natural for parents to care, for instance, if their child is hurt (Discourses, 1.11; 1.23).  We actually have a whole Discourse (1.11) from Epictetus dedicated to the topic of “Natural Affection” or philostorgia.

This natural affection, though, is clearly to be somehow transformed in Stoicism.  Epictetus asked his students: “How, then, shall I become loving and affectionate?” (Discourses, 3.24).  His answer was that Stoics should become affectionate in a manner consistent with the fundamental rules and doctrines of their philosophy.  In particular, we’re to love while bearing in mind the distinction between what’s up to us and what is not.  He also suggests that if what we’re calling “love” or “affection” makes us enslaved to our passions and miserable, then it’s not “good” for us, and that’s a sign something is wrong.   Put another way, this presumably means that Stoics should love in accord with the “reserve clause”.  So we should wish that others flourish and become wise and virtuous, but we should do so lightly, completely accepting that our wish may not be realised – accepting them as they are, in other words, warts and all.

Exercise: Love as Acceptance versus Well-Wishing

The Stoics wanted others to flourish, become wise and virtuous,

1. Repeat the word “love” to yourself.
2. Contemplate first, the attitude of love as acceptance, accepting yourself despite your imperfections, seeing your current situation as the only one possible given your nature and your past environment and experiences.
3. Next contemplate the attitude of love as one of wishing yourself well, wanting yourself to flourish and attain goodness, virtue, and wisdom, now and in the future, fate permitting.
4. Now try to do the same for another person, begin by contemplating love as acceptance of their flaws, even their follies or vices, etc.
5. Now try to contemplate love as wishing for them to flourish and attain goodness, virtue, and wisdom, fate permitting.

So where does that leave us?  A good summary is in the article “Epictetus on How the Stoic Sage Loves”, by William O. Stephens, in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 14, 193-210, 1996.

The Stoic loves other people in a very free, giving way.  His love is not at all conditional upon its being reciprocated by the person loved.  The Stoic does not compromise his own moral integrity or mental serenity in his love for others, nor is his love impaired by his knowledge of the mortality of his loved ones.  Rather, the Stoic’s love and natural affection are tempered by reason.  His love and affection serve only to enrich his humanity, never to subject him to [psychological] torment.

Some of the key concepts here:

1. The Stoic ideal of wisdom and virtue definitely included loving other people – the Sage loves others and seeks friendship.
2. The Stoic Sage’s love is unconditional; it doesn’t require reciprocation, which would be an “indifferent” for Stoics because it’s not up to us.
3. The sort of love the Stoic Sage experiences is neither unhealthy nor excessive but healthy and consistent with virtue.
4. This sort of love is inherently realistic about the transience of external things and the mortality of those loved.
5. The love of the Stoic is fundamentally rational, meaning it’s consistent with reason and doesn’t lead to irrational behaviour.

 

Exercise: Hierocles and Metta Bhavana

The Stoic philosopher Hierocles, a contemporary of Marcus Aurelius, described psychological practices for expanding oikeiôsis, our sense of “affinity” for others.  He says our relationships can be represented as a series of concentric circles, radiating out from ourselves and our closest kin.  Stoics should attempt to “draw the circles somehow toward the centre”, he said, voluntarily reducing psychological distance in their relationships.  He even suggests verbal techniques, not unlike calling acquaintances “friend” or calling close friends “brother”.  Hierocles elsewhere recommends treating our brothers as if they were parts of our own body, like our hands and feet.  Zeno’s saying that a friend is “another self”, perhaps likewise encourages us to take others deeper into the circle of our affinity and natural affection.  Hierocles’ comments about oikeiôsis might be turned into a contemplative exercise.

There’s a popular Buddhist meditation exercise called metta bhavana, which means “expanding loving-kindness”.  We might use this as a basis for developing Hierocles’ advice into a modern contemplative practice.

1. It helps to prepare by choosing your examples in advance to visualise in a moment: yourself, a loved one, an acquaintance, an enemy,
2. Close your eyes; take a few moments to relax and focus your attention inward.
3. Picture a circle of light surrounding your own body and imagine that it symbolises a growing sense of rational self-love or affection toward yourself as a being capable of wisdom and virtue.  If you like, repeat a phrase such as “May I flourish and be happy” to yourself, to help focus on this attitude.
4. Now imagine that circle is expanding to encompass a member of your family, a loved one or close friend, whom you now project natural affection toward, as if they were somehow part of your own body.  Focus on the seeds of virtue within them, and wish them well, perhaps repeating a phrase like “May you flourish and be happy”, while accepting that this is beyond your direct control.
5. Next, imagine that circle expanding to encompass an acquaintance you encounter in daily life, toward whom you normally feel more neutral, perhaps colleagues you work alongside, and project feelings of natural affection toward them, as if they were members of your own family.
6. Again, let the circle expand further to include even someone you dislike, perhaps someone who sees you as an “enemy”, and focusing as much as possible on their positive qualities or virtues, wish them well, picturing the sphere of your affection spreading to include them.
7. Now let the circle encompass all of you together, allowing your feelings of affection to spread over the whole group.
8. Imagine the circle now progressively growing to envelop your surrounding area and finally the entire world and the whole human race as one, allowing your feelings of rational affection to spread out to every other member of the human race, developing a sense of kinship with them insofar as they possess reason and therefore the capacity for progressing toward wisdom.

Try to continue this attitude throughout your daily activity.  Seneca argued that expanding natural affection into a philanthropic attitude that encompasses the rest of mankind teaches us to love more philosophically, without over-attachment to any specific individual.  He goes so far as to say: “he who has not been able to love more than one, did not even love that one much” (Letters, 63).  The Sage is not infatuated with anyone.  He loves everyone as much as he is able, while accepting that they are changeable and that one day they will die.

In a nutshell…

One of the recurring questions that comes up in discussion forums is “What’s an ‘orthodox’ Stoic?”  I think most modern scholars would say that, first and foremost, it’s someone who believes that “virtue is the only true good”, as Cicero put it.  However, one of the main sources for our knowledge of early Stoicism, Diogenes Laertius, sheds some further light on this question.  He provides three examples of important students of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, who broke from the orthodox Stoic teachings of Zeno.  They changed their own beliefs in ways that caused them to be labelled “heterodox” and perhaps in some cases even caused them to split from the Stoic school completely, to go their own way, or join another school of philosophy.

1. Aristo of Chios, discounted the value of studying Physics and Logic, believing Ethics to be the sole concern of philosophy.  He also argued that apart from virtue and vice, everything else is completely “indifferent”, seemingly rejecting the Stoic doctrine of “preferred” indifferents.  He sounds like someone leaning toward the older Cynic teachings.
2. Herillus of Carthage, who argued that knowledge (episteme) in general was the true goal of life, rather than virtue, or knowledge specifically of the nature of the good.  However, he also seems to have argued that there are two fundamentally separate goals in life: the attainment of scholarly and scientific knowledge achieved only by the wise, and a “sub-goal” apparently pertaining to fulfilling one’s social and familial duties, which even the unwise could pursue.  The Stoics, by contrast, argued that the only goal is moral wisdom or virtue, and that this inherently entails acting for the welfare of others.  Herillus perhaps came to resemble the Academics or Aristotelians more than the Stoics, and may have been viewed as going to the opposite extreme compared to Aristo, in his arguments against Zeno.
3. Dionysius of Heraclea, who disagreed with Zeno after suffering from a painful eye-infection, which led him to conclude that pleasure (hedone), and presumably the avoidance of pain, was the true goal of life rather than virtue.  He left the Stoa to join the Cyrenaic school, although this dispute perhaps prefigures the long-running arguments between the later Stoics and Epicureans.

Discussion

One of our main sources for the teachings of the early Stoics is The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius.  The organisation of the book is particularly interesting with regard to Stoicism.  Book Six of the Lives concerns the Cynics and begins with a chapter on Antisthenes, followed by chapters on Diogenes of Sinope, Crates, and several other Cynics.  Diogenes claims that Stoicism is part of a philosophical succession going back to Cynicism and prior to that Antisthenes, who was a friend and student of Socrates.  So the “Cynic-Stoic succession” is thereby traced all the way back to its supposed origin in the teachings of Socrates.  Modern scholars believe it’s unlikely Diogenes of Sinope, the first Cynic, actually met Antisthenes.  Nevertheless, it’s quite possible he was inspired by his writings, so there may be a grain of truth in the notion that Antisthenes was somehow the forerunner of the Cynic, and thereby the Stoic, tradition.  In any case, Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, was undoubtedly greatly influenced by Cynicism, and we’re told he studied under the Cynic Crates of Thebes for many years before founding the Stoa.

Book Seven of the Lives therefore deals with the Stoic philosophers, starting with Zeno.  The first chapter, which covers Zeno’s life, contains a lengthy outline of early Stoicism in general.  Book Seven also contains chapters on several other important philosophers of the early Stoic school, such as Cleanthes, the successor of Zeno, and it concludes with a lengthy chapter on Chrysippus, the third head of the school.  However, curiously, the chapter on Zeno and the early doctrines of the school is immediately followed by three chapters on lesser-known Stoics, described by Diogenes Laertius as “heterodox”, i.e., unorthodox, or renegades from the school.

[Among the pupils of Zeno were:] Ariston, the son of Miltiades and a native of Chios, who introduced the doctrine of things morally indifferent; Herillus of Carthage, who affirmed knowledge to be the end; Dionysius, who became a renegade to the doctrine of pleasure, for owing to the severity of his ophthalmia he had no longer the nerve to call pain a thing indifferent: his native place was Heraclea. (Diogenes Laertius, 7.1)

It may be noteworthy that although all three are described as pupils of Zeno, only Dionysius is actually labelled a renegade from the school, and he is the only one of whom we are specifically told that he joined another school, the Cyrenaics.  Before introducing these three, at the end of the chapter on Zeno, he also writes as follows referring to them as “Stoics”:

But the points on which certain of the Stoics differed from the rest are the following. (Diogenes Laertius, 7.1)

Diogenes concludes the three chapters on heterodox Stoics by saying:

These three, then, are the heterodox Stoics.  The legitimate successor to Zeno, however, was Cleanthes: of whom we have now to speak. (Lives, 7.4)

This can be taken as evidence that there were important internal disputes that helped to shape the early development of the Stoic school.  It’s not entirely clear to what extent these three philosophers were subsequently associated with the Stoics, except that we’re told Dionysius left to join the Cyrenaics.  Each was called heterodox because of doctrinal disagreements with Zeno, which happened to be quite different in each case.  Their reasons for being classed as “heterodox” or “renegade” Stoics are worth outlining as they provide an interesting overview of three distinct ways in which an early Stoic could be considered to have strayed so far from Zeno’s teachings that he was no longer considered a Stoic at all.  In other words, this gives us some insight into which beliefs were considered orthodox to early Stoicism.

1. Aristo of Chios

Also spelled “Ariston” and known as “Aristo the Bald”.  Although he came to disagree with Zeno’s teachings, Aristo seems to have been an important and influential teacher in his own right.  We’re told elsewhere that Marcus Aurelius was inspired to become a philosopher, many centuries later, by reading Aristo’s works.

Aristo rejected the value of studying Physics and Logic, and instead claimed that philosophers should only concern themselves with Ethics.  This attitude appears to resemble that of the Cynics.  Zeno started his own philosophical career as a Cynic but began to study at the Academy and the Megarian school, apparently because he felt that some understanding of Logic and Physics was important, and lacking from the Cynic philosophy.  Stoicism was therefore known for its threefold curriculum: Ethics, Physics and Logic.  However, different Stoics appear to have placed different degrees of importance on these three disciplines.  It’s often felt that the late Roman Stoics are primarily concerned with Ethics, and have noticeably less to say about Physics and Logic, although this may be partly a reflection of the fact that only a small fragment of their writings survive.  It sometimes appears that Logic and Physics are important to Stoicism, but perhaps not absolutely essential.  For instance, their heroes, such as Heracles and Diogenes, did not excel in Physics or Logic, and yet were considered role-models because of their moral character.  Aristo appears to have gone too far, though, by completely rejecting the value of Logic and Physics for philosophy.

Aristo also rejected Zeno’s concept of “preferred” indifferents and insisted that apart from virtue and vice, everything else must be regarded as totally indifferent.  In this respect, he also appears more aligned with the Cynics rather than the Stoics.  Although, curiously, he doesn’t appear to be considered particularly aligned with Cynicism by other ancient authors.  Again, some scholars see the introduction of the concept of “preferred” indifferents as one of the key things that distinguished Stoics from Cynics.

2. Herillus of Carthage

Also spelled “Erillus” and sometimes said to be of Chalcedon rather than Carthage, presumably due to an error in the ancient sources.

He argued that knowledge (episteme) should be regarded as the true goal of life, rather than virtue, and he appears to have said also that such knowledge takes different forms in different circumstances.  The early Stoics appear to have argued that virtue itself is a form of knowledge.  The highest virtue, wisdom, is described as the knowledge of good and evil, and of indifferent things, and the other virtues are defined in similar times as ethical knowledge in relation to different forms of action.  This suggests that Herillus broke from the teachings of Zeno by making knowledge in general the goal of life, whereas the Stoics considered only ethical knowledge, or moral wisdom, to be an end in itself.  They probably considered other forms of knowledge, or science, to be of some kind of subordinate value.  For example, Chrysippus reputedly taught that Physics is of value only insofar as it contributes to our understanding of Ethics.  Stoic literature is full of warnings against those who pursue abstract learning for its own sake, without grounding it somehow in the practicalities of living a virtuous life.  Diogenes Laertius has relatively little to say about him, but he writes:

Herillus of Carthage declared the end of action to be Knowledge, that is, so to live always as to make the scientific life the standard in all things and not to be misled by ignorance. Knowledge he defined as a habit of mind, not to be upset by argument, in the acceptance of presentations. Sometimes he used to say there was no single end of action, but it shifted according to varying circumstances and objects, as the same bronze might become a statue either of Alexander or of Socrates. He made a distinction between end-in-chief and subordinate end: even the unwise may aim at the latter, but only the wise seek the true end of life. Everything that lies between virtue and vice he pronounced indifferent. His writings, though they do not occupy much space, are full of vigour and contain some controversial passages in reply to Zeno.

We’re told he wrote several books on topics including, training exercises (askesis), the passions, on judgements or opinions (hupolepsis), and on Hermes, and Medea.  Diogenes Laertius tells us in his chapter on the life of Cleanthes, the successor of Zeno as head of the Stoa, that he wrote a book entitled “Reply to Herillus”.  This suggests that Herillus’ break from the Stoa and his criticisms of Zeno were significant enough for the second head of the school to attempt to refute them in writing.

It’s perhaps tempting to see Herillus as leaning away from the Stoa and more in the direction of Plato’s Academy, and perhaps the Aristotelians, in this respect.

3. Dionysius of Heraclea

Dionysius of Heraclea (c. 330 – c. 250 BC) was also known as “Dionysius the Renegade”, because of his radical break from the Stoic teachings of Zeno.  The Greek word literally means one who changes sides or changes his mind, i.e., a turn-coat or renegade.  It’s perhaps notable that neither Aristo nor Herillus are labelled as ones who changed sides, or renegades from the Stoic school.  Perhaps this is meant to imply that they remained Stoics, albeit unorthodox ones, whereas Dionysius actually left the Stoa.

He had previously studied philosophy in the Megarian school, before becoming a student of Zeno.  Dionysius left the Stoa because he came to value pleasure (hedone), and the absence of pain, as the goal of life, rather than virtue.  We’re actually told that Dionysius left the Stoa to join the Cyrenaic school, who made pleasure the goal of life.  We’re told Dionysius was driven to this conclusion by the intolerable pain and discomfort of an eye-infection.  In his chapter on the life of Zeno, Diogenes Laertius writes:

When Dionysius the Renegade asked [Zeno], “Why am I the only pupil you do not correct?” the reply was, “Because I mistrust you.”

We know little more about Dionysius. He wrote two books on freedom from passions (apatheia), two on training exercises (askesis), four on pleasure (hedone), among others.

Zeno classed pleasure and pain as key examples of morally “indifferent” things.  So Dionysius’ claim that pleasure is the goal of life would have constituted a very radical departure from “orthodox” Stoic teachings, so much so that he inevitably left and rebranded himself as a Cyrenaic.

The Cyrenaic school was quite different from the Epicurean school, which rose to prominence slightly later.  However, this schism in the early Stoa can probably be seen as prefiguring the subsequent and long-running disagreements between the Stoics and Epicureans.

[Excerpt on the Stoic Paradoxes from Teach Yourself Stoicism by Donald Robertson.]

Although Stoicism was a philosophical system that prized rational understanding, the original philosophical arguments of Zeno were notoriously terse and unconvincing to his critics. Zeno proclaimed many famous “paradoxes”, which literally meant ideas that go against what the majority believe, flying in the face of popular opinion. They portrayed a radical but impressively coherent world-view that attracted many people who wanted to see if it could be defended more rigorously.

The third head of the Stoic School, Chrysippus, one of the very greatest intellectuals of the ancient world, attempted to do this, writing hundreds of volumes of detailed philosophical arguments in defence of Stoic doctrine, particularly engaging with the criticisms made by ancient Skeptics who represented a rival school, the Academy of Plato. He basically transformed Stoicism from the small movement founded by Zeno into one of the philosophical heavyweights of the ancient world.

For if Chrysippus had not lived and taught,
The Stoic school would surely have been naught. (Lives, 7.183)

We’re told he was known for making the striking remark to his teacher Cleanthes that he only wanted to be instructed in the core doctrines (dogmata) of Stoicism and that he would discover the arguments for and against them for himself (Lives, 7.179).

Many modern readers will likewise first be attracted to the attention-grabbing ideas of the Stoics, which promise to turn our prevailing philosophy of life on its head, and then seek to weigh them up rationally later. Some Stoics even referred to this upheaval in our world-view and system of values, turning away from the conventional view of the majority, as a philosophical “conversion” (epistrophê), literally a “turning around” or “U-turn” in life. In this regard, the Stoics were influenced by the Cynics, who we’re told would walk against the flow of the crowds leaving a theatre, or walk about backwards in public, to illustrate their desire to swim against the current in life and go in the opposite direction from the majority of people (Lives, 6.64; Anthology, 3.4).  The Stoics therefore recognised that they were saying things many people would struggle to accept at first, although they also believed that their philosophy was ultimately based on common sense assumptions, accessible to everyone on reflection.

For example, Cicero defends six notoriously cryptic “Stoic Paradoxes” in his short book of that title:

1. Virtue, or moral excellence, is the only good (conventional “goods” such as health, wealth and reputation fundamentally count as nothing with regard to living a good life)
2. Virtue is completely sufficient for Happiness and fulfilment, a man who is virtuous lacks no requirement of the good life
3. All forms of virtue are equal as are all forms of vice (in terms of the benefit or harm they do to the individual himself)
4. Everyone who lacks perfect wisdom is insane (which basically means everyone alive; we’re all essentially mad)
5. 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)
6. Only the wise man is truly rich (even if, like Diogenes the Cynic, he owns nothing that he can’t carry in his knapsack)

These puzzles require some explaining, as we’ll see. Musonius Rufus apparently used to say that students were expected to be left in stunned silence following his lectures rather than applauding him. They felt that they’d heard something unnerving but powerful and were often unsure what to make of it all at first. I’d say that this is true for modern readers as well. If we don’t feel at least slightly unsettled by what the Stoics are saying then we’re probably missing something. Yet despite the paradoxes, Stoicism was in many respects the most down-to-earth of the Athenian philosophical schools, being grounded in our experience of daily life. We’re told Cleanthes, the second head of the Stoa, used to remark: “Possibly the philosophers say what is contrary to opinion [or “paradoxical”], but assuredly not what is contrary to reason” (Epictetus, Discourses, 4.1).

The Stoic philosopher Athenodorus Cananites (c. 74 BC – 7 AD) was personal tutor to the very first Roman Emperor, Augustus.  He was himself a student of the greatest scholar of the Middle Stoa, Posidonius of Rhodes.  Curiously, Athenodorus was reputed to have cleared a ghost from a haunted house.  However, he was also known for employing a Stoic approach to anger management.

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, 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 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 before responding.

It must have worked, in On Anger, 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. (3.23)

In the next section, he explains 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. (3.24)