Three Easy Steps to Wisdom in the Face of Adversity
Three Easy Steps to Wisdom in the Face of Adversity
Let me tell you one of my favourite stories… Two and a half thousand years ago the Greek philosopher Socrates remarked that society will never flourish until kings become philosophers, or philosophers become kings. However, there had never actually been a king who was a Socratic-style philosopher. In fact, about five hundred years elapsed before a man appeared on the world-stage whom historians would confidently call a philosopher-king. Or rather, not just a king but an emperor. His name was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Emperor of Rome in the late 2nd century AD.
Marcus followed a Hellenistic philosophy called Stoicism, which was inspired by Socrates. And he left behind a record of his private philosophical contemplations, which is known today as The Meditations. Some of you may know it. Former US president Bill Clinton said it was his favourite book. The former US Secretary of Defense, General James Mattis, carried a copy with him on deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan.
My belief is that Marcus’ inner life, in The Meditations, helps us to understand his outer life, as the Emperor of Rome. I’m going to divide that into three Stoic philosophical themes, illustrated by three historical events: The Antonine Plague, The Marcomannic Wars, and The Civil War of Avidius Cassius.
1. The Antonine Plague
No sooner than Marcus had been acclaimed emperor, the Parthians invaded Rome’s ally Armenia, starting a war in the middle east. After five years, the Roman armies led by the co-emperor Lucius Verus were finally victorious and plundered the defeated Parthian cities. Marcus and Lucius rode through the streets in triumph, with the loot brought home by their legions.
As part of this ceremony, a slave accompanied them whispering the words memento mori, in their ears, “remember thou must die”. The Stoics made this into a slogan of their philosophy, which encourages us to contemplate our own mortality and focus on living in the here and now. As the poet Horace, who dabbled in Stoicism, said: carpe diem, seize the day, do not put your faith in tomorrow.
Ironically, the legions also brought back death from Parthia… in the form of smallpox, or the Antonine Plague. Over the next fifteen years, about five million people died. Yet Marcus’ only reference to the plague in The Meditations is to say that terrible though it was, it paled in comparison to the moral plague of ignorance and vice that infects many people’s minds. However, he frequently refers to the contemplation of his own mortality, and uses it as a way to focus his mind on his genuine priorities in life, and his duty as emperor.
2. The Marcomannic Wars
A few years after the Parthian War ended, another war began on the far side of the empire, the northern frontier. Millions of barbarian tribesmen from Germania and surrounding areas — the Marcomanni, Quadi, and Sarmatians — started invading nearby Roman provinces, sacking their towns. Rome was thrown into crisis because in the middle of the Antonine Plague, the army was barely fit to respond.
This time, Marcus donned the military cape himself and rode forth with the legions. Unusually for a Roman emperor, he had no military training or experience whatsoever. In their initial battles, the Romans were badly defeated. However, they persevered and studied their enemy very carefully.
One of the most dramatic battles of the war was fought on the frozen surface of the river Danube. The Romans pretended to fall into a trap set by the barbarians but used a cunning new tactic to defeat them. To resist the Sarmatian cavalry charge, the legionaries would form a defensive hollow square in the midst of the frozen river. However, this time they braced their feet against a line of shields laid down behind them to secure their footing. With thousands of tribal warriors attacking them on all four sides, Marcus’ legionaries held their defensive formation and fought them on the ice, awash with blood. It was an incredibly dangerous tactic, but the Romans won, and they began to turn the tide of the war.
The empire would typically enslave captured warriors. However, in The Meditations, Marcus says that someone who takes pride in capturing barbarians is no better than a robber. Stoics are cosmopolitans, who believe that all humans are brothers and sisters, even if they don’t speak the same language. And we’re told Marcus actually resettled a great number of defeated tribesmen in the outlying regions of Italy, recruiting others into the Roman army. He actually formed an elite cavalry unit composed entirely of Sarmatian horsemen and sent them to fight my ancestors, in Britain. He was a pragmatist, who said “It’s impossible to make men exactly as we wish, rather our duty is to use them as they are.”
3. Avidius Cassius
Then another crisis rocked the empire. Marcus had to abandon the northern frontier just as he was winning when the shocking news reached him that one of his most senior generals, Avidius Cassius, had been acclaimed emperor by the Egyptian legion. “Fake news” had been circulated throughout the eastern provinces proclaiming that Marcus had died from the plague. The Senate immediately declared Cassius a public enemy, which threw the Roman people into a panic because they expected him to respond by marching on the capital. Suddenly Marcus was facing a civil war, three weeks’ march away. And yet, miraculously, it ended without any real bloodshed.
Every morning, Marcus used a Stoic contemplation that involved imagining himself encountering betrayal and all manner of setbacks throughout the day ahead. Stoicism requires facing all types of misfortune, in our imaginations, while retaining our equanimity, and having a “philosophical attitude” toward adversity. To the Senate’s surprise, Marcus calmly announced that he was going to forgive everyone involved in the rebellion. But Cassius didn’t back down. The legion in Egypt knew they were hopelessly outmatched when they heard that Marcus was marching against them with a massive army of veterans from the northern frontier. Knowing that he’d sworn to pardon them, they had no more reason to risk fighting. Cassius was assassinated by his own officers, who delivered his head to Marcus, and said sorry. So, ironically, Cassius was killed by kindness. Marcus kept his word and pardoned the rest of the conspirators.
Conclusion
These three examples are situations in which Marcus Aurelius’ inner life as Stoic philosopher can help us understand his handling of events in his outer life as Roman emperor. I believe he thought of himself as philosopher first and emperor second. As I mentioned in my introduction, politicians today still read The Meditations but I’ll leave you to ponder whether any of them actually have the wisdom of a philosopher-king.
The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius was extremely well-read. Indeed, he urges himself several times in The Meditations, his personal notebook of philosophical reflections, to set aside his reading and focus on improving his character instead. He was clearly a bit of a bookworm. So what exactly did he like to read?
In his love of ancient literature he was second to no man, Roman or Greek…
We have several Roman histories which discuss Marcus Aurelius’ life. These contain a few references to his literary interests. Indeed, one historian, Herodian, writes:
He was concerned with all aspects of excellence, and in his love of ancient literature he was second to no man, Roman or Greek; this is evident from all his sayings and writings which have come down to us. — History of the Empire
The Historia Augusta portrays Marcus quoting the Roman poet Ennius:
The state of Rome is rooted in the men and manners of the olden time. — Ennius, Annales
We also have a cache of letters between his Latin rhetoric tutor, Marcus Cornelius Fronto, and several friends, mainly Marcus Aurelius himself. In it they mention in passing several Latin writers that Marcus has read, such as Cato the Elder, Cicero, Lucretius, and even Seneca. However, there are also several prominent references to literature in The Meditations, mainly to Greek tragedies. Marcus actually prefaces some of these quotations with the following explanation of their significance to him:
At first tragedies were brought on the stage as means of reminding men of the things which happen to them, and that it is according to nature for things to happen so, and that, if you are delighted with what is shown on the stage, you should not be troubled with that which takes place on the larger stage. For you see that these things must be accomplished thus, and that even they bear them who cry out, “O Cithaeron.” And, indeed, some things are said well by the dramatic writers, of which kind is the following especially… — Meditations, 11.6
‘Ah Cithaeron!’ is from Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the King. As we’ll see, though, by far the majority of the quotes Marcus incorporates in The Meditations are from the Greek tragedian Euripides.
Euripides in The Meditations
The tragic poets have also provided some helpful sayings. This, for instance, is particularly good: ‘If the gods have neglected me and my two sons, this too has its reason,’ and again: ‘Do not be angry with outward events,’ and this: ‘Our life must be reaped like a ripe ear of corn,’ and many another like them. — Meditations, 11.6
These quotes come from three lost plays by Euripides. They appear to have been of special importance to Marcus because they are also found, quoted more fully, in an earlier chapter of The Meditations.
The first is a quote from Euripides’ Bellerophon, of which only fragments survive.
‘Be not angry with outward events, For they care nothing for it.’ — Meditations, 7.38
It tells the story of the eponymous Greek hero. Bellerophon appears to have lost everything, and lives in despair in a barren land. At some point, he tries to fly to Olympus on his winged horse Pegasus but falls to earth. Finally, wounded by his fall, he repents of his blasphemy against the gods.
The second is from another lost tragedy of Euripides, Hypsipyle, of which only excerpts remain.
‘Our lives must be reaped like a ripe ear of corn, And as one comes to be, another is no more.’ — Meditations, 7.40
It tells the story of Hypsipyle, former queen of Lemnos, and lover of the hero Jason.
She is captured by pirates and sold into slavery, thereby becoming the nursemaid of Opheltes, the infant son of a Nemean priest called Lycurgus, and his wife Eurydice. Hypsipyle brings Opheltes with her to a spring, where she intends to obtain water for a sacrifice. In a terrible accident, though, the child placed in her care, Opheltes, is ensnared and killed by a monstrous serpent.
The child’s mother, Eurydice, wishes to have her put to death for neglect but is persuaded by a famous seer that her son’s death was ordained by the gods.
The third is from Euripides’ Antiope, which was lost, although many fragments have now been recovered.
‘If the gods have neglected me and my two sons, This too has its reason.’ — Meditations, 7.41
Antiope of Thebes was a beautiful princess who was raped by Zeus, in the form of a satyr, and became pregnant. Her father, the king, committed suicide as a result.
Antiope then fled her home in disgrace and was taken far away to the city of Sicyon, in the south of Greece, by a king called Epopeus who made her his wife. Her deceased father’s brother, her uncle Lycus, pursued her, and seized her, though, taking her back to Thebes. Along the way, she gave birth to twins near Mount Cithaeron in central Greece. One the son of Epopeus and one the son of Zeus. She was forced to abandon both to the care of an elderly herdsman. Back at Thebes she was treated as a slave, and suffered terrible persecution for many years.
However, eventually she escaped and ended up taking shelter in a house in the city of Eleutherae, near Mount Cithaeron. Her two sons, who are now full-grown adults working as herdsmen, turn out to be living there. They eventually recognize their long-lost mother and save her from persecution.
Those are not the only passages Marcus quotes from Euripides, though.
‘For fortune is with me and the right.’ — Meditations, 7.42
Another fragment from an unknown Euripidean tragedy. It can also be translated as the good (to eu) is with me and the just (to dikaion). It directly follows the quote from Antiope, so it’s possible that Marcus saw the two as related. For example, it could be read: If the gods have neglected me and my two sons, this too has its reason, for the good is with me and the just. In other words, perhaps someone like Antiope doesn’t deserve to be abandoned, or punished, by the gods because she was acting virtuously, not viciously, so she consoles herself by thinking there must be another meaning to what’s befallen her.
‘The earth loves showers, and the holy ether loves [to fall in showers].’ And the universe loves to create whatever is to be; so I will say to the universe, ‘Your love is my love too.’ Is that not also implied in the expression, ‘This loves to come about’? — Meditations, 10.21
This is another fragment of Euripides, from an unknown tragedy. Marcus seems to be interpreting it here in relation to the Stoic concept of divine Providence. “Your love is my love too”, sounds like an expression of what the early Greek Stoics called “living in agreement with Nature”, or what we call today, following Nietzsche, amor fati, love of one’s fate.
‘What springs from the earth to earth returns, But that which springs from a heavenly seed Returns again to the heavens above.’ — Meditations, 7.50
This fragment comes from a lost tragedy by Euripides called Chrysippus, about the death of a legendary Greek hero from the region of Elis. (Not to be confused with the Stoic philosopher of the same name.) This quote could easily be in reference to the death of the main character, Chrysippus, who reputedly committed suicide out of shame after being abducted and raped by his male tutor, the legendary King Laius. It may be a reflection on the separation between his body, which has been violated, and his soul, which remains pure and returns to the heavens.
‘With meats and drinks and magic spells To turn aside the stream and hold death at bay.’ — Meditations, 7.51
This quote is from Euripides’ Suppliants, or The Suppliant Women. This play actually survives today. It tells the story of women whose sons King Creon of Thebes has denied burial after they died in battle trying to seize control of his city. The women plead with the Athenian hero Theseus to attack Thebes and recover the corpses of their sons for burial. Eventually the remains of the dead warriors are recovered and returned to their families by Theseus.
Toward the end of the play, one of the characters, an old man called Iphis, wishes in frustration that we could live our lives twice over as the second time we would have learned from our mistakes, and would live more wisely. He then concludes by lamenting the inevitability of old age and the folly of those who desperately seek to avoid their inevitable demise by (enchanted) meats and drinks, and magic spells meant to prolong life.
It’s striking that Marcus quotes so often from Euripides because he appears also to have been of great interest to the early Greek Stoics. Euripides was a (slightly older) contemporary of Socrates. The two were viewed as connected in some way by other Athenians, e.g., as part of related cultural movements, or with Euripides actually learning philosophy from Socrates. There were even rumours that Socrates had contributed to writing of some of Euripides’ tragedies. Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school, and its most prolific author, wrote many lengthy treatises and was known for citing his favourite authors very frequently.
So much so that in one of his treatises he copied out nearly the whole of Euripides’ Medea, and some one who had taken up the volume, being asked what he was reading, replied, “The Medea of Chrysippus.” — Diogenes Laertius
It’s quite possible, therefore, that Marcus became familiar with some of these passages from earlier Stoic writings, which quoted Euripides in the context of philosophical analysis of his tragedies.
Homer in The Meditations
Homer, the most influential of all Greek poets, unsurprisingly, was another favourite of the Stoics. Indeed, Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, wrote a (lost) book titled Homeric Problems, spanning five volumes, and other early Stoics also wrote books concerning Homer’s texts. Nevertheless, Marcus only seems to quote Homer twice in The Meditations, a fact that perhaps serves to further highlight Euripides’ unique importance for him.
The first Homeric quote is rather cryptic:
‘ — and my heart laughed within me.’ — Meditations, 11.31
It is from TheOdyssey, where Odysseus is delighted at his victory over the Cyclops. It’s impossible to tell why Marcus thought this particular phrase was so important.
The second is a shortened version of a famous passage from The Iliad. By contrast, Marcus explains exactly what it means to him, so it’s worth quoting the surrounding passage in full.
To him who is penetrated by true principles even the briefest precept is sufficient, and any common precept, to remind him that he should be free from grief and fear. For example:
“Leaves, some the wind scatters on the ground So is the race of men.”
Leaves, also, are your children. And leaves, too, are they who cry out as if they were worthy of credit and bestow their praise, or on the contrary curse, or secretly blame and sneer. And leaves, in like manner, are those who shall receive and transmit a man’s fame to after-times. For all such things as these “are produced in the season of spring,” as the poet says. Then the wind casts them down and the forest produces other leaves in their places. But a brief existence is common to all things, and yet you avoid and pursue all things as if they would be eternal. A little time, and you shall close your eyes and soon another will lament him who has attended you to your grave. — Meditations, 10.34
Hesiod in The Meditations
Hesiod, another early Greek poet, is also quoted by Marcus.
And Faith, Modesty, Justice, and Truth have fled ‘away from the broad-pathed earth up to high Olympus’. — Meditations, 5.33
This is from Hesiod’s Work and Days.
‘They will heap reproaches on virtue, uttering wounding words.’ — Meditations, 11.32
This is also from Work and Days, although the word “virtue” has been inserted.
These passages seem to allude to the Stoic notion that the virtues are ideals, and although their “seeds” exist within all of us, everyone is tainted by folly and vice. So the Stoics believe wisdom, ironically, consists in firmly grasping the fact that none of us are wise, and that it’s therefore inevitable that men will act foolishly and even condemn virtue. Compare this to perhaps the most famous passage in The Meditations (2.1) where Marcus says that each morning he prepares himself mentally for the day ahead by anticipating that he will meet all manner of foolish and vicious people.
Unknown Poets in The Mediations
There are also several quotations from unknown sources.
‘To the immortal gods and to ourselves may you bring joy.’ — Meditations, 7.39
This implies that we should view the same thing, virtue, as bringing joy both to ourselves and to the good — it is both good for us and praiseworthy, both healthy and pious, according to the Stoics.
‘Join them not in their laments and feel no agitation.’ — Meditations, 7.43
This simply echoes the familiar view of the Stoics that we should avoid becoming “carried away” by the complaints of others, and although we may listen to them we should not “groan along with them” as Epictetus put it.
‘When a storm from the gods blows down upon us, Man must toil and endure and not complain.’ — Meditations, 7.51
This last quotation is also quite striking and it beautifully expresses the Stoic view that we should be prepared for adversity and do our best to endure, in accord with wisdom and justice, and without lamentation or grief.
Conclusion
Marcus does refer to other books in The Meditations, mostly insofar as he quotes or refers to the writings of philosophers, particularly Epictetus, Heraclitus, and Plato’s dialogues portraying Socrates. Marcus was a conscientious student of the law and was definitely well-read in the literature of Roman jurisprudence, much of which was influenced by Stoic philosophy. He also appears to have enjoyed reading satires, histories, and at one point even mentions Aesop’s fable of The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.
However, the quotes above from Greek epics and tragedies, though often overlooked, potentially help to amplify some of the key philosophical ideas of The Meditations. It’s striking, on closer inspection, how often Marcus quotes Euripides, and from how many of his plays. It could be that Euripides was simply one of Marcus’ favourite authors. However, as noted earlier, it’s also quite plausible that these quotes were found in earlier Stoic texts, where the provided material for philosophical discussion about their meaning.
For instance, there’s also a reference to Pindar, the Greek lyric poet, in The Meditations.
There is nothing more pitiable than the person who makes the circuit of everything and, as the poet says, ‘searches into the depths of the earth’, and tries to read the secrets of his neighbour’s soul, yet fails to perceive that it is enough to hold fast to the guardian-spirit within him and serve it single-mindedly. — Meditations, 2.13
This is a fragment of Pindar, cited by Plato in the Theaetetus, which lends support to the theory that some of Marcus’ other quotes from poetry throughout The Meditations may be second-hand and derived from earlier philosophical texts discussing them.
The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius was extremely well-read. Indeed, he urges himself several times in The Meditations, his personal notebook of philosophical reflections, to set aside his reading and focus on improving his character instead. He was clearly a bit of a bookworm. So what exactly did he like to read?
We have several Roman histories which discuss Marcus Aurelius’ life. These contain a few references to his literary interests. Indeed, one historian, Herodian, writes:
He was concerned with all aspects of excellence, and in his love of ancient literature he was second to no man, Roman or Greek; this is evident from all his sayings and writings which have come down to us. — History of the Empire
The Historia Augusta portrays Marcus quoting the Roman poet Ennius:
The state of Rome is rooted in the men and manners of the olden time. — Ennius, Annales
We also have a cache of letters between his Latin rhetoric tutor, Marcus Cornelius Fronto, and several friends, mainly Marcus Aurelius himself. In it they mention in passing several Latin writers that Marcus has read, such as Cato the Elder, Cicero, Lucretius, and even Seneca. However, there are also several prominent references to literature in The Meditations, mainly to Greek tragedies. Marcus actually prefaces some of these quotations with the following explanation of their significance to him:
At first tragedies were brought on the stage as means of reminding men of the things which happen to them, and that it is according to nature for things to happen so, and that, if you are delighted with what is shown on the stage, you should not be troubled with that which takes place on the larger stage. For you see that these things must be accomplished thus, and that even they bear them who cry out, “O Cithaeron.” And, indeed, some things are said well by the dramatic writers, of which kind is the following especially… — Meditations, 11.6
‘Ah Cithaeron!’ is from Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the King. As we’ll see, though, by far the majority of the quotes Marcus incorporates in The Meditations are from the Greek tragedian Euripides.
I wrote a book about Stoicism and ACT called Build Your Resilience but at that time the ACT community, when I asked them, generally didn’t seem to see the parallels with Stoicism.
Against being unemotional and the case for a “Passionate Stoicism”
Against being unemotional and the case for a “Passionate Stoicism”
I do not withdraw the wise man from the category of man, nor do I deny to him the sense of pain as though he were a rock that has no feelings at all. — Seneca, Letters, 71
Stoicism has become a quite trendy over the past couple of decades. When I first began writing about it, roughly 25 years ago now, things were very different.
Until recently, there were very few popular books about the subject and they weren’t very widely-read. There were not many articles on websites. Now, though, new books and articles appear every day. That’s a good thing because Stoicism has a great deal to offer people. It’s the original philosophical inspiration for cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), the leading form of modern evidence-based psychotherapy. Perhaps more importantly, it offers a way of building emotional resilience, which may reduce the risk of developing anxiety or depression in the future.
Put bluntly, Stoicism is not the same thing as stoicism. Virtually all modern academics capitalize the name of the Greek philosophy to highlight the difference…
However, the downside is that when as idea becomes more and more popular it can become oversimplified and distorted. Often a good idea can become a victim of its own success. The glaring example of that with Stoicism, the Greek philosophy, is the widespread tendency for people to confuse it with stoicism (lowercase) the unemotional coping style. When people talk about lowercase stoicism they mean things like “have a stiff upper-lip”, “suck it up”, “boys don’t cry”, etc.
Put bluntly, though, Stoicism is not the same thing as stoicism. I highlighted this misconception in How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, my recent book on the life and philosophy of the Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius:
Another popular misconception today is that Stoics are unemotional. The ancient Stoics themselves consistently denied this, saying that their ideal was not to be like a man of iron or to have a heart of stone.
For example, the Oxford English Dictionary makes a distinction between two definitions of the word:
The endurance of pain or hardship without the display of feelings and without complaint.
An ancient Greek school of philosophy founded at Athens by Zeno of Citium. The school taught that virtue, the highest good, is based on knowledge; the wise live in harmony with the divine Reason (also identified with Fate and Providence) that governs nature, and are indifferent to the vicissitudes of fortune and to pleasure and pain.
Definition 1 is lower-case stoicism, and definition 2 is the Greek philosophy of Stoicism, which we know today mainly through the works of Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. There are two separate definitions because there are two different meanings of the word. Virtually all modern authors therefore capitalize the name of the Greek philosophy to highlight this distinction, and this simple convention has become well-established in common usage. The unemotional coping style called “stoicism”, by contrast, is never capitalized by anyone.
Although it’s a simple terminological mistake, it can potentially have very serious psychological consequences.
The Internet is awash, though, with individuals who seem oblivious to this distinction and they end up woefully confusing both themselves and other people. Why should that matter? We’ll see shortly that although it’s a simple terminological mistake, it can potentially have very serious psychological consequences.
stoicism ≠ Stoicism
Brad Inwood, one of the leading academic scholars of Stoicism, and a professor of philosophy and classics at Yale, likewise wrote in his recent book on the subject:
There is a stereotype of Stoicism familiar to everyone, the claim that Stoicism involves being relentlessly rational, but without a trace of emotion — Mr Spock from Star Trek, only more so. That this isn’t the right view of Stoicism is now generally understood, and specialists will even point out that the passions (pathē) from which the Stoic wise person is said to be free are not what we mean by emotions but a more narrowly defined group of states of mind that are by definition pathological. The wise person may well be perfectly rational, but that doesn’t deprive him or her of all affective or emotional experience. — Brad Inwood, Stoicism: A Very Brief Introduction
Another excellent introduction to Stoicism by a leading academic scholar in this field, Lessons in Stoicism by John Sellars, makes the same point.
In modern English the word ‘stoic’ has come to mean unfeeling and without emotion, and this is usually seen as a negative trait. […] When the ancient Stoics recommended that people ought to avoid emotions, it was these negative emotions [such as anger] that they primarily had in mind.
“The Stoics”, he adds, “certainly do not envisage turning people into unfeeling blocks of stone.”
The meaning of many other Greek philosophical terms has become degraded over the centuries. These words are now used in ways that distort, water-down, or caricature their original meaning. For example:
cynicism ≠ Cynicism
sophist ≠ Sophist
epicurean ≠ Epicurean
academic ≠ Academic
skeptic ≠ Skeptic
In each case, the original term denoting a branch of Greek philosophy is still in use but with quite a different meaning. For example, what we mean today by “cynicism” (lowercase) is something along the lines of being negative and thinking the worst of people, etc. That’s very loosely based on the Greek philosophy of Cynicism, which was really a whole way of life centred on the notion that virtue, or strength of character, was the goal of life.
So what? It’s Just Words!
Some people might think it doesn’t matter but, well, they’re wrong. First of all, it causes a huge amount of confusion online when people get stoicism and Stoicism mixed-up. It leads to crossed-wires and misinformation being spread.
One of those things is known to be good for your mental health whereas the other is known to be harmful.
Many articles, and even a few books, have been written by people who don’t know the difference between Stoicism, the Greek philosophy, and stoicism the unemotional personality trait or coping style. Other people read the resulting dog’s breakfast, and come away mistakenly thinking that Stoicism is just about having a stiff upper-lip or suppressing painful emotions. What if I told you, though, that one of those things is known to be good for your mental health whereas the other is known to be harmful? You really would not want to get them confused then, right?
Lowercase “stoicism” is often equated with the way of coping with stress that people call “having a stiff upper-lip”. More specifically, it means suppressing or concealing unpleasant, painful, or embarrassing emotions. The problem with that is that there’s now a substantial body of scientific research from different teams of psychologists around the world, working with different populations, which tends to converge on the finding that stoicism is unhealthy. In fact to highlight that — and because it’s pretty awkward to distinguish between “Stoicism” and “stoicism” when speaking rather than writing — I sometimes just refer to lowercase “stoicism” as pseudo-stoicism. Many people assume that lowercase stoicism is synonymous with emotional resilience or toughness. Ironically, though, research tends to show the opposite. It doesn’t lead to resilience but often increases emotional vulnerability and it would better be described as a form of weakness rather than strength.
First of all, people who dislike admitting painful emotions are less likely to seek help either from friends or from mental health professionals. We know that having appropriate support available from others tends to predict resilience. People who score high on ratings of “stoicism” are the sort of people who would try to put up with a toothache by adopting a “grin and bear it” attitude rather than just going to the dentist and getting it fixed. They’re masking their emotional problems rather than getting help dealing with the root cause. Of course, other people sometimes complain excessively or compulsively seek reassurance. That’s not resilient either. But a healthy attitude would be somewhere in the middle: seeking help where necessary but not complaining to others too much.
Second, efforts to actively suppress or conceal painful feelings, such as anxiety or sadness, tend to make them worse. It leads to something psychologists call “the paradox of thought suppression”, whereby undesirable thoughts and feelings tend to grow stronger. There are several reasons for that. One is that trying to suppress automatic thoughts and feelings requires paying more attention to them and, as if we’re putting them under a magnifying glass, that naturally intensifies our experience of them. Another is that by struggling against our feelings in this way we tend to reinforce associations between them and other aspects of our experience so they become more likely to “rebound” or recur frequently in the future.
I would qualify those criticisms by saying that suppressing or distracting yourself from painful feelings may sometimes work in the short-term. It can be one way of coping with acute pain or getting through a short-lived crisis. The real problem is when these strategies are used repeatedly over the long-term, to deal with chronic problems. That’s because they tend to prevent normal, healthy emotional processing from ever being able to take place. Lowercase or pseudo stoicism can become pretty toxic, in many cases, when people come to depend upon it as their main way of coping throughout life.
So if stoicism is unhealthy what about Stoicism? Well, there is growing interest among psychologists in conducting research on Stoicism itself, and there are some initial positive findings emerging. However, Stoicism, the Greek philosophy, also happens to be the philosophical inspiration for cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). There are hundreds of independent research studies demonstrating the efficacy of CBT. They can therefore be viewed as providing indirect support for the psychological benefit of concepts and techniques derived from Stoicism.
Psychological Research on Stoicism
Modern Stoicism is a nonprofit organization, run by a multidisciplinary team of volunteers, which spreads reliable information about Stoic philosophy. It also carries out scientific research on Stoicism. (I’m one of the founding members.) In 2020, the team gathered data from over 2,500 participants in the online course Stoic Mindfulness and Resilience Training (SMRT). One of the main questionnaires, the Stoic Attitudes and Behaviours Scale (SABS), is used to measure participants’ belief in and adherence to the basic principles of Stoic philosophy. Results from this were compared to those from the Liverpool Stoicism Scale (LSS), which is used in medical and psychological research to measure the unemotional coping style called stoicism.
Some items from the Liverpool Stoicism Scale include:
“It makes me uncomfortable when people express emotions in front of me.”
“I don’t really like people to know what I am feeling.”
“One should keep a stiff upper lip.”
“Expressing one’s emotions is a sign of weakness.”
“I would not consider going to a counsellor if I had a problem.”
Our hypothesis was that stoicism, as measured by LSS, would not be positively correlated with Stoicism, as measured by SABS. Not only did we confirm that but we also found a very small negative correlation (r=0.1). If anything, the more someone follows Stoicism they less likely they are to exhibit lower-case stoicism by suppressing their emotions, etc. Indeed, whereas adherence to Stoicism (SBS) later increased after training, pseudo-stoicism (LSS) actually decreased. In plain English, the data confirmed that stoicism and Stoicism are two different things.
What Stoicism Really Said
Pseudo-stoicism is based on a very crude and simplistic view of how our emotions work. It’s basically both false and unworkable. The ancient Stoics, by contrast, had a much more nuanced conception of the psychology of emotion. That’s how they were able to develop an effective system of psychotherapy and emotional resilience-building. They were actually well over two thousand years ahead of their time in anticipating modern cognitive-behavioural therapy.
We call the naive psychological assumptions made by people in ordinary language their “folk psychology”. The folk psychology of emotions is remarkably simplistic. People tend to talk about feelings such as anxiety as if they were homogenous. Psychologists sometimes call this the “lump” theory of anxiety, for example. Anxiety is talked about as if it’s just a blob of unpleasantness and somehow we have to struggle to contain or suppress it. That’s such a crude concept, though, that it’s almost superstitious. In reality, there are many different types of anxiety, which function in different ways. Snake-phobic anxiety is not at all the same as a clinical panic attack or generalized anxiety, in psychopathology. They have different causes, symptoms, prognoses, and respond to different treatments.
Moreover, emotions such as anxiety are composite. They’re made up of lots of different elements, such as thoughts, actions, and feelings, of different kinds, which interact with one another. Anxiety, I like to say, is a cake baked from many ingredients — it’s not just a homogenous lump. The more we understand the ingredients of our emotions the more easily we can process and control them, in healthy and natural ways. Perhaps the most fundamental and important distinction is the favourite one of the Stoics — some things are up to us and other things are not.
A great deal of misery is caused by people struggling to suppress or control the involuntary (automatic) aspects of their emotions. This usually goes hand in hand with a failure to take responsibility for the aspects of emotion that are, at least potentially, under our voluntary control. The Stoics, remarkably, understood this long ago. They labelled involuntary aspects of emotion such as blushing, shaking, sweating, heart racing, etc., as propatheiai or “proto-passions”.
These are “not up to us”, they’re automatic or reflex-like, predominantly physiological reactions. So the Stoics class them as natural, inevitable, and morally “indifferent” — neither good nor bad. Pseudo-stoicism, however, does the opposite. It tries to suppress or conceal these involuntary emotional reactions and treats them as though they were bad, harmful, or even shameful. From this perspective, it should be more obvious that pseudo-stoicism is almost the polar opposite of ancient Greek Stoicism. Ancient Stoicism is not about trying to eliminate automatic thoughts and feelings.
As Epictetus puts it, the goal of Stoicism is not to be as cold and unfeeling as a rock, or “like a statue” (Discourses, 3.2). Similar phrases recur throughout the Stoic literature. For example, Seneca wrote:
There are misfortunes which strike the sage — without incapacitating him, of course — such as physical pain, infirmity, the loss of friends or children, or the catastrophes of his country when it is devastated by war. I grant that he is sensitive to these things, for we do not impute to him the hardness of a rock or of iron. There is no virtue in putting up with that which one does not feel. — Seneca, On the Constancy of the Sage, 10.4
By judging these involuntary aspects of emotion in strongly negative terms we actually make them worse in the long-run, and we become emotionally weaker rather than stronger, vulnerable rather than resilient.
The Cognitive Nature of Emotion
The voluntary aspect of emotion consists mainly in what happens next, after the first flush of anger, fear, or sadness. What we tell ourselves in response to the situation and our automatic feelings. The Stoics were far ahead of their time in proposing that emotions are cognitive in nature — they consist not only of feelings but also of thoughts and beliefs. When you get angry, for example, it’s because you are having angry thoughts and your mind has activated underlying angry beliefs and attitudes.
People who use pseudo-stoicism as a coping strategy don’t distinguish between the “lump” of emotion and the cognitive aspects, though. They just try to shove all of their emotions down, forcing them out of their minds. Alternatively, they use alcohol, drugs, or distractions such as comfort eating or compulsive checking social media to try to escape their emotions by numbing themselves. The word “stoic” is therefore often just used as a synonym for “unemotional” and that’s definitely not what Stoicism teaches. The ancient Stoics repeatedly emphasized that their ideal was not to be like statues or men with hearts of stone.
Rather than trying to suppress feelings or sensations, which would entail judging an indifferent to be bad or harmful, the Stoics tried to modify the underlying value judgement. That approach happens to be more in accord with the way modern cognitive therapists bring about emotional change and it’s very different from what people mean by “keeping a stiff upper lip”. For instance, the Stoics believed that fear is based on the underlying belief that something bad, something awful, is about to happen. That’s virtually identical to modern cognitive models of anxiety. If someone has an irrational fear it’s typically the case that they’ve overestimated the probability and/or severity of the anticipated threat. (They’ll also often underestimate their ability to cope.)
It’s the slippery slope to long-term emotional vulnerability, the opposite of psychological resilience.
Cognitive therapists help their clients to reappraise feared situations by using Socratic questioning, and related techniques. What if the chances of something bad happening are slim? What if it did happen but turned out not to be as bad as you’re assuming? The Stoics also used Socratic questioning to question irrational fears and other unhealthy emotions, although they focused, more radically, on questioning whether any external event could ever be truly awful.
Someone who is pseudo-stoic, though, and suppresses or conceals their painful emotions will never do this. They’ll never identify the beliefs that underlie their anger, fear, and sadness, let alone question them and replace them with more rational beliefs. That’s another reason why pseudo-stoicism is actually a form of psychological weakness masquerading as strength. It’s the slippery slope to long-term emotional vulnerability, the opposite of psychological resilience.
Passionate Stoicism
When people conflate stoicism and Stoicism they’re typically ignoring the entire social dimension of Stoic Ethics. When they say that someone is a stoic they don’t usually have in mind that they believe justice, fairness, and kindness are cardinal virtues in life, that we should cultivate the bond of natural affection that exists between us and other human beings, and treat them as equals, as part of a brotherhood of man, viewing all people as our fellow-citizens in a single cosmic city. (The word cosmopolitan is another whose meaning has been corrupted over the centuries — it means a citizen of the whole cosmos who treats others as her fellow-citizens.) I’ve found that the following question serves to highlight the distinction.
What’s the difference between these two statements?
I am being very stoic about the welfare of others.
I am being very Stoic about the welfare of others.
To anyone’s who’s studied Stoic philosophy, it should be pretty obvious that these are two completely different things.
There’s also the matter of healthy emotions in Stoicism. For many people, as we’ve seen, stoicism carries the connotation of being unemotional. At least it sounds a little odd to their ears to say that stoics could be particularly cheerful and affectionate. However, the Stoic philosophers had a whole system of classification for healthy emotions: their goal was not simply to be emotionally empty but rather to experience healthy feelings of joy, cheerfulness, affection, and so on, which naturally supervene upon virtue.
Indeed, Marcus Aurelius described the goal of Stoicism, as exemplified by his teacher, Sextus of Chaeronea, as being someone “full of love and yet free from passion” (Meditations, 1.6). He clearly doesn’t mean all passions but specifically the ones Stoics consider to be pathological: unhealthy, excessive, and irrational. The Greek word for love that he uses (philostorgia) can also be translated as “natural affection” or “family affection” — it’s the kind of love parents have for their children. Love, of this sort, is one of the healthy passions (eupatheiai) of Stoic psychology. Marcus therefore refers to this and other good emotions many times throughout The Meditations.
Conclusion
We’re not going to stop the flow of articles and online discussions that are sadly vitiated by confusing Stoicism with being unemotional. It’s a remarkably simple mistake, a schoolboy error. Yet even some quite intelligent people have fallen into the trap of conflating stoicism with Stoicism, just because two different words happen to look the same.
Nevertheless, being clear about the problem can help people who are interested in studying Stoicism to see through the confusion of others. John Sellars and Brad Inwood’s recent books on Stoicism, for instance, make it clear that this is just a common misconception. Psychological research published by Modern Stoicism and others has helped by confirming that Stoicism and stoicism are not positively correlated. I find that calling stoicism “pseudo-stoicism” or “lowercase stoicism” also helps, especially on podcasts, etc., where capitalization obviously isn’t an option. It also helps to bear in mind that confusing an unhealthy emotional coping strategy with a healthy one, is obviously (to use an old-fashioned term) a recipe for neurosis.
That’s no longer under our control so the Stoics view it as a moral “indifferent” in their technical sense. So really the whole of Stoic philosophy and all of its many psychological techniques are geared to changing our perception of such things, including the example you give.
Every single “academy” in the world is named after the original Akademia of Athens. Founded by Plato after the execution of his teacher, Socrates, at the start of the 4th century BC, Plato’s Academy was the first major school of philosophy, the first academic institution. It’s one of the very foundation stones of Western civilization. For centuries, it was considered a centre of learning, and a beacon of light, throughout the Western world.
“What happened to it?”, people ask, “Where was it located?” and “Does Plato’s Academy still exist?”
I’m an author, writing about philosophy, who happens to live in Athens. So this topic comes up a lot for me in conversation. “What happened to it?”, people ask, “Where was it located?” and “Does Plato’s Academy still exist?” In a nutshell, it was destroyed by the Roman dictator Sulla in the 1st century BC. He gutted its buildings and tore down the surrounding trees to build his siege engines. The area in which it was once located is a public park today, containing some ruins, and so no, unfortunately, it’s no longer standing. However, maybe it’s not gone forever…
Living in Athens
I was born in Scotland, emigrated to Canada, but currently have permanent resident status in Greece, and live in a suburb of Athens called Kypseli. It’s just over half an hour’s walk from Akadimia Platonos Park, the original location of Plato’s Academy. I often go there. It’s very popular with local Athenians walking dogs, practicing martial arts, jogging, and letting their kids play. However, it’s perhaps not as well-known to tourists yet as it should be.
The grounds are now referred to as the “Academy Park”, although originally it was known simply as the Academy. Plato’s philosophical school based there came to adopt the same name. One theory is that “Akadimia” originally meant “far away deme” or suburb, as it was located outside the ancient city walls of Athens. Later another story evolved that it was named in tribute to a legendary Greek hero called Academus.
There’s a nice statue (herm) of Plato close to the park. A few years ago a small “digital museum” was created nearby, which I also like to visit. There’s a short film showing several local people who talk about how economically deprived the area is and that the site of the Academy was neglected for years because most people didn’t even realize its significance. One older man said something like:
“There used to be factories here and now we have thirty hairdressers and thirty pharmacies — and that’s about all!”
The first time I visited the grounds of the Academy Park, where the ruins are located, children were playing, two guys lurking beside the ruined palaestra (wrestling school) were drinking beer and smoking, and a middle-aged woman on a bench nearby, who looked very dishevelled, was talking to herself. There’s a bit of litter and graffiti but it’s not too bad. It could easily be cleaned up. The philosopher Simon Critchley recently wrote a very sniffy article about it in The New York Times. He called it “a public park in a not particularly nice part of town”. I guess he didn’t see its potential. I feel very connected with the past there. I also think it’s a beautiful park and I go there often to walk and reflect on my writing.
The Original Academy
Plato’s school was founded about twelve years after the death, in 399 BC, of Socrates. We don’t know what it looked like. It was possibly just a house where he held symposia, at which philosophical discussions took place. Similar discussions were often also held while walking around outdoors in the park. We do know his school of philosophy was located in what the ancients called a gymnasium. There were three main gymnasia in classical Athens: the Academy, Lyceum and Cynosarges. Plato founded his school at the Academy, Aristotle set up at the Lyceum, and Antisthenes taught at the poorer Cynosarges, possibly the home of the Cynic school of philosophy.
The English word “gymnasium” refers to a room or building used for exercise. However, in ancient Greece a gymnasion was more like what we’d call a “sports complex” or perhaps a “recreation ground” — a large park with walks, running tracks, wrestling schools, baths, and other buildings. Athletes competing in games such as the Olympics would train there. The grounds contained palaestrae, buildings for training in boxing, wrestling, pankration, and ball games. (A palaestra is a bit closer in meaning to our modern notion of a building called a “gymnasium”.) The word gymnasion is also related to the Greek for “naked” as the youths who exercised there did so in the nude.
Gymnasia, such as the Academy, also incorporated shrines, as they were dedicated to the gods. Even more surprisingly, to our modern minds, they were places of learning and conversation, where older men, in particular, would socialize and talk about philosophy and the arts. The Greek Sophists gave speeches in the gymnasia and Socrates could often be found discussing philosophy there with his friends. There were public libraries. Later, philosophical schools such as Plato’s famous Academy appeared. Women were not allowed into the grounds of ancient Greek gymnasia but there’s a story that two women disguised themselves as men in order to attend Plato’s lectures there.
Students at the Academy
Plato’s most famous student at the Academy was Aristotle but after Plato’s death it was his cousin, Speusippus, who became the next head of the school, known as a “scholarch”. He was succeeded by Xenocrates of Chalcedon. We’re told that Xenocrates more would retire into himself, in private contemplation, several times each day, and that he assigned whole hour each day to silence.
He was succeeded, in turn, by a student named Polemo, who experienced a sort of conversion after hearing Xenocrates speak.
As a youth he [Polemo] was so unbridled and promiscuous that he carried money about with him to procure the immediate gratification of his desires. He even kept sums hidden in narrow lanes. And even in the Academy a three-obol piece was found next to a pillar, where he had buried it for the same purpose. One day, by agreement with his young friends, he burst into Xenocrates’ school in a drunken state, wearing a garland on his head.
The teacher was completely unfazed:
Unperturbed, Xenocrates proceeded with his discourse as before, its subject being temperance. The boy, as he listened, was gradually captivated, and thereafter became so diligent that he surpassed all the others and eventually became head of the school… — Diogenes Laertius
Although Polemo got into some trouble as a young man, through philosophy he later acquired a reputation for having such an unshakeably calm demeanour that he sounds like a precursor of the Stoics.
…from the time he began to study philosophy he developed such strength of character that his demeanor remained the same on all occasions. Even his voice never varied… At any rate, when a mad dog bit him in the back of the thigh, he did not even turn pale, and remained unmoved by the uproar that arose in the city at the news of what had happened.
We can see here that some students of philosophy actually took up residence in the grounds of the Academy park.
We’re told that he withdrew from society and confined himself to the Garden of the Academy (the surrounding park) where his students built themselves little huts so they could live near the Shrine of the Muses and the lecture hall of the Academy, where they went to hear Polemo speak. — Diogenes Laertius
Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, was originally (and perhaps mainly) a Cynic philosopher, although he also studied at other schools of Athenian philosophy, including spending ten years attending Plato’s Academy, under Xenocrates and later Polemo.
“The unexamined life,” Socrates said, “is not worth living.”
Rebuilding the Academy
I’ve been talking for a while about “creating something new” near the original location of Plato’s school, in the Academy Park. Recently, our plans have started to come together. I’m working with an amazing team of people on ways of holding events there, and contributing to the overall improvement of the area, in ways that will hopefully benefit everyone, including the local residents. I doubt it’s realistic to literally “rebuild” the original Platonic Academy but there are other ways of bringing it back to the area.
Greece brought philosophy to the world. Now wealthy countries can give something back by helping to protect her cultural heritage, and learning to appreciate her potential. We could all be walking in the footsteps of Socrates and Plato, talking about wisdom and virtue, and learning to question ourselves more deeply. “The unexamined life,” Socrates said, “is not worth living.” You can do that anywhere, of course, but wouldn’t it be inspiring to do it at the original location of Plato’s Academy?
Every single “academy” in the world is named after the original Akademia of Athens. Founded by Plato after the execution of his teacher, Socrates, at the start of the 4th century BC, Plato’s Academy was the first major school of philosophy, the first academic institution. It’s one of the very foundation stones of Western civilization. For centuries, it was considered a centre of learning, and a beacon of light, throughout the Western world.
“What happened to it?”, people ask, “Where was it located?” and “Does Plato’s Academy still exist?”
I’m an author, writing about philosophy, who happens to live in Athens. So this topic comes up a lot for me in conversation. “What happened to it?”, people ask, “Where was it located?” and “Does Plato’s Academy still exist?” In a nutshell, it was destroyed by the Roman dictator Sulla in the 1st century BC. He gutted its buildings and tore down the surrounding trees to build his siege engines. The area in which it was once located is a public park today, containing some ruins, and so no, unfortunately, it’s no longer standing. However, maybe it’s not gone forever…
