Category: Stoicism

The philosopher Socrates once asked why all men praise liberty but so many neglect to acquire self-discipline. Without the virtue of temperance, he reasoned, none of us can truly become wise or free, as we’re bound to be misled and enslaved by our own passions. It was the Stoic school of philosophy, though, founded a century after Socrates’ death, which turned this simple insight into a whole way of life. Socrates taught that in order to attain wisdom, we must free ourselves from violent passions, such as greed and anger.

Today, although we cherish our freedoms more than ever, we’ve largely forgotten that they’re meaningless without the strength of character to make use of them well. For Stoics, the uncomplaining endurance required in Greek military training provided an obvious means of learning discipline. Perhaps for that reason, many of the greatest philosophers of antiquity were soldiers.

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Soldiering as a Philosophy of Life in Stoicism

Soldiering as a Philosophy of Life in Stoicism

In one of the most famous passages of The Meditations, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius writes that everything physical is as transient as a stream rushing past us, everything belonging to the mind is as insubstantial as vapour and deceptive as smoke or mist, and that…

…life is warfare, and a sojourn in foreign land. — Meditations, 2.17

Only one thing can save us from all this confusion: philosophy, the love of wisdom.

Marcus was literally engaged in warfare, in a foreign land, when he wrote this.

He goes on to say many striking things about the philosophy he followed, called Stoicism. However, scholars have been struck by the oddness of this apparent allusion to his own situation, in a book that’s notoriously vague about time and place.

Indeed, Marcus was literally engaged in warfare, in a foreign land, when he wrote this. Nearby in the text we find the rubric “At Carnuntum”, the name of the Roman legionary fortress in Upper Pannonia where Marcus had stationed himself during the early stages of the First Marcomannic War. (Today Carnuntum is in Austria, near Vienna.)

As emperor, and commander-in-chief, he was responsible for the largest army ever amassed on a Roman frontier, numbering approximately 140,000 men altogether. Throughout his reign, Marcus was engaged in almost constant warfare, following the Parthian invasion of Armenia in 161 CE, and the invasion of the Danube provinces, and northern Italy, by the Marcomanni and their allies in 167 CE. The Meditations is believed to have been written some time between the years 170 and 175 CE, which happen to coincide with the middle and end of the First Marcomannic War. There don’t seem to be direct or explicit references in The Meditations to the war. Nevertheless, there are several curious allusions to military life.

The Trial of Socrates

Marcus often seems to turn real objects and events, from his life, into metaphors for philosophy. However, the precedent for doing so with military service was set almost six centuries earlier, at the dawn of the philosophical tradition in which he stood.

Plato’s Apology, was arguably the most influential philosophical text of antiquity. Certainly every Stoic was very well acquainted with it. During his trial for impiety and corrupting the youth, in 399 BCE, Socrates mentioned his military service, as a veteran of at least three major battles in the Peloponnesian War (Apology, 28b-e). Indeed, Socrates should have been decorated for valour, after saving the life of an officer who had been unhorsed during the Battle of Potidaea, but he turned down the award.

Military duty and courage are exemplified, in this iconic speech, by remaining at one’s post in the face of danger, rather than fleeing from the enemy. Socrates proceeds to draw an analogy between this and his current situation, facing the death penalty in court. He views himself as a soldier, once again, ordered by the god Apollo to commit his life to philosophy. He therefore considers it his duty to stand his ground, defending what he believes in, even when his life is threatened. This time, however, rather than protecting the city of Athens, he’s defending truth and justice, without which, he thinks, the city itself would be rendered worthless.

It also seared on their minds the image of the philosopher as a kind of soldier.

Marcus actually quotes directly from this account of Socrates’ defence speech:

For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself thinking it the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness [of deserting his post]. — Meditations, 7.45

Socrates, of course, was executed. However, his death sent shockwaves through the ancient world, and inspired generations of young Greeks and, later, Romans to pursue the study of philosophy. It also seared on their minds the image of the philosopher as a kind of soldier.

This military metaphor for philosophy as a way of life recurs several times in The Meditations. For example, Marcus describes his own situation in life as that of a Roman emperor, and a soldier, who, like Socrates, stands at his post waiting, with discipline and courage, upon the signal from his general.

And further, let the deity which is in you be the guardian of a living being, manly and of ripe age, and engaged in political matters, and a Roman, and a ruler, who has taken his post like a man waiting for the signal which summons him from life, and ready to go, having need neither of oath nor of any man’s testimony. — Meditations, 3.5

Looking back on his life, Marcus says:

And call to recollection both how many things you have passed through, and how many things you have been able to endure, and that the history of your life is now complete and your [military] service is ended. — Meditations, 5.31

Either you endure life’s hardships, or choose to depart from life, or find yourself dying, in which case you’ve “discharged your duty”, he says, and can be of good cheer (Meditations, 10.22).

Both are equally deserters from their post, the man who runs from fear, and the one who yields to anger.

Soldiering in The Meditations

Elsewhere in The Meditations, the military metaphor is used to explain that, in life generally, we must be unashamed of asking for help. Indeed, it’s courageous to do so in the service of our true goal.

Be not ashamed to be helped for it is your business to do your duty like a soldier in the assault on a town. How then, if being lame you cannot mount up on the battlements alone, but with the help of another it is possible? — Meditations, 7.7

In a longer passage, Marcus seems to draw upon his experience as a military commander to make quite a startling, perhaps even paradoxical, claim. He observes that “both are equally deserters from their post”, the man who runs from fear, and the one who yields to anger (Meditations, 11.9).

The legions were highly renowned for their professionalism. Roman generals perceived “barbarian” armies, by contrast, as chaotic and undisciplined. Tribal warriors often fought in loose formation, frequently breaking ranks either to flee or to charge opportunistically into the fray. The Roman military advantage came in part from their remarkable discipline on the field of battle. Legionaries were trained to remain in formation. Marcus seems to have in mind the, typically Roman, notion of it being disgraceful to either flee from or attack the enemy against orders. In either case, a soldier would potentially be risking the lives of his own companions by breaking ranks.

Marcus says here that a man should not let others stand in his way, or turn him aside, when he is acting in accord with justice. That requires the courage and determination of a soldier. However, neither should he allow his adversaries (“those who try to hinder or otherwise trouble you”) to drive him from gentleness and benevolence into a state of hatred and anger toward them. We must remain on our guard against both dangers — being turned into a coward, or into a monster, by violent and impulsive passions. Fear and anger are both forms of moral weakness.

This is what Marcus means, in part, when he says “life is warfare”. He makes it clear that, as far as Stoic ethics is concerned, when we hate or are angry with any other human being, we behave like deserters rather than soldiers, and embrace injustice toward our fellow man.

In one of the most graphic passages of The Meditations, he appears to describe the bloody aftermath of a battle but, again, he transforms the experience into a curious metaphor for the goals of Stoic philosophy.

If you ever saw a hand cut off, or a foot, or a head, lying anywhere apart from the rest of the body, such does a man make himself, as far as he can, who is not content with what happens, and separates himself from others, or does anything unsocial. — Meditations, 8.34

Indeed, Marcus says that our ability to live in accord with justice, and in a sort of harmony with mankind, is based upon an even more fundamental attitude of Stoic acceptance and contentment. Resenting our fate is therefore also a form of desertion:

And also when the ruling faculty [of the mind] is discontented with anything that happens then too it deserts its post. For it is constituted for piety and reverence towards the gods no less than for justice. — Meditations, 11.20

People today often call this attitude amor fati, borrowing a phrase from Nietzsche.

From Socrates, in 399 BCE, all the way down to Marcus Aurelius, writing over 570 years later, this image endured of life as warfare, and the philosopher as a soldier, remaining at his post. Abandoning the goal, and fleeing in cowardice from life’s dangers, of course, is the moral equivalent of turning into a deserter. However, so is bitterly complaining about our lot, like a faithless grumbling soldier who resents his posting. More insightful, though, is Marcus’ insistence that hatred and anger turn us all into deserters by alienating us from the rest of mankind. When we view our adversaries as nothing more than hated enemies, and give way to passionate anger, we risk losing sight of our own humanity, if we’re not careful.

How the First US President was Influenced by the Stoics

How the First US President was Influenced by the Stoics

George Washington, known for his exemplary self-discipline and mental composure, is a figure in whom many see the influence of Stoicism. Unlike some of the other Founding Fathers, he lacked a classical education. Nevertheless, according to Eliot Morison’s The Young Man Washington (1932), Washington was indeed inspired by Stoic philosophy.

Morison attributed Washington’s self-discipline to a philosophy of life acquired in his late teens from his friends the Fairfaxes. The Fairfax family, although devout Christians, drew considerable inspiration from the writings of Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and other classical authors influenced by Stoicism. Although there’s no evidence that Washington had studied the writings of ancient Stoics in great depth himself, Morison argues that he clearly absorbed Stoic values, early in his life, from conversations with the Fairfaxes during his frequent visits to their Belvoir estate.

“The mere chapter headings are the moral axioms that Washington followed through life.”

However, Washington had read at least one book on Stoicism, Seneca’s Morals by Way of Abstract (1702) translated by Sir Roger L’Estrange. It contains excerpts from Of Benefits, Of a Happy Life, Of Anger, Of Clemency and twenty-eight of the Epistles. “The mere chapter headings”, Morison says, “are the moral axioms that Washington followed through life.” For example: It is the Part of a Great Mind to despise Injuries.

Washington’s Favourite: Cato

Seneca recommends adopting a role model and, preferring Romans to ancient Greeks, he says “Choose therefore a Cato”.

For we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters; you can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler. — Seneca, Moral Letters, 11

Consequently, Washington’s favourite historical figure did indeed come to be the Roman Stoic hero, Cato the Younger, the subject of one of Plutarch’s most memorable biographies. Cato had died opposing Julius Caesar in the Great Civil War that ended the Roman Republic. Washington adored Joseph Addison’s play Cato, a Tragedy (1712), which he read together with his first love, Sally Fairfax. He quoted it in a letter to her and even wanted them to act together in private performances of it.

The play represents Cato as a moral exemplar and the supreme embodiment of republican values:

Not all the pomp and majesty of Rome
Can raise her senate more than Cato’s presence.
His virtues render our assembly awful,
They strike with something like religious fear,
And make even Caesar tremble at the head
Of armies flush’d with conquest.

Washington fell so in love with the play that he reputedly arranged to watch a performance of it with the Continental Army camped at Valley Forge, which he had put on to raise their morale. It’s easy to see why he would have found it so inspiring when it contains famous lines such as the following:

Better to die ten thousand thousand deaths
Than wound my honour.

And,

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

Indeed, Washington paraphrased those lines in a letter addressed to his friend and fellow-soldier Benedict Arnold: “It is not in the power of any man to command success; but you have done more — you have deserved it.”

Another Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, was an admirer of the same play. In his Autobiography he describes using a notebook to track his efforts to cultivate his own moral virtues, adding “This my little book had for its motto these lines from Addison’s Cato:”

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

Washington’s interest in the play appears to have been enduring. Later, when he wished to retire from public life, he quoted the following lines:

Let me advise thee to retreat betimes
To thy paternal seat, the Sabine field,
Where the great Censor toil’d with his own hands,
And all our frugal ancestors were blest
In humble virtues, and a rural life.
There live retired, pray for the peace of Rome;
Content thyself to be obscurely good.
When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,
The post of honour is a private station.

Although he was no scholar of Stoic philosophy, as we’ve seen, Washington was exposed to its teachings early on, through his conversations with Sally Fairfax and reading L’Estrange’s edition of Seneca. It was Joseph Addison’s Cato, a Tragedy, though, which really exemplified Stoicism for him and inspired him until the day he died. It’s therefore no coincidence, I think, if we see many traces of Stoic virtue embodied by Washington throughout his life.

(I’m indebted, for most of the key information above, to H.C. Montgomery’s short essay, ‘Washington the Stoic’, in The Classical Journal, vol. 31, no. 6, Mar 1936.)

How to do psychotherapy with a Roman Emperor

How to do psychotherapy with a Roman Emperor

The idea of a Roman emperor undergoing a course of psychotherapy probably sounds like historical fiction, right? Well, it’s not. The Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was famously a lifelong follower of the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism. Stoic philosophers employed an early form of cognitive psychotherapy, and Marcus had a therapist.

Indeed, the word Marcus uses here in Greek is therapeia — there’s no question that it means therapy.

How do we know this? Because he tells us so, right at the beginning of his personal notebook, known to us today as The Meditations. Marcus is looking back on the things he learned from his family and teachers. We know from the Roman histories that the Stoic philosopher and Roman statesman, Junius Rusticus, was his favourite tutor. Speaking of him, Marcus says:

From Rusticus I received the impression that my character required improvement and therapy… — Meditations, 1.7

The word Marcus uses here in Greek is therapeia — there’s no question that it means therapy. Indeed, we know that the ancient Stoics, and other philosophers, wrote entire books on the subject of psychopathology and psychotherapy, the cause and cure of emotional problems. One of the most influential was the Therapeutics of Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school. Although it’s sadly lost, it’s one of the key influences on a surviving text called On the Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul’s Passions by Galen, the court physician of Marcus Aurelius.

As it happens, Stoicism was the philosophical inspiration for cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT).

I’m a psychotherapist by profession, and write books about Stoic philosophy. As it happens, Stoicism was the philosophical inspiration for cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), the leading evidence-based form of modern psychotherapy. I’ve written about the relationship between them at length elsewhere. (See my recent book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor for a detailed discussion of how Marcus put Stoicism into practice in daily life, and its links with modern psychotherapy.)

Some of you are probably thinking that psychotherapy is a modern concept, right? Many people believe that it first started with Sigmund Freud. Well, even that part’s not true. Freud himself actually trained in psychotherapy, in France, under both Charcot and Bernheim. Modern psychotherapy had been up and running for at least half a century before Freud got onboard.

More importantly for us, though, the concept of psychotherapy was actually very familiar to ancient Greeks and Romans. Although they don’t use this word, as far as I know, they do come extremely close to doing so. It was common to refer to philosophy itself as a medicine or therapy (therapeia) for the psyche, the soul or mind.

Pythagorean & Socratic Therapy

We don’t know exactly how this began but, for instance, the pre Socratic philosopher, Pythagoras of Samos, combined the teaching of moral wisdom with music therapy and contemplative practices as far back as the 6th century BC. The Pythagoreans definitely believed that such practices could heal the soul of unhealthy desires and emotions, particularly anger.

We know that, centuries later, the Stoics were particularly influenced by Pythagoreanism. Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism wrote a (lost) book titled Pythagorean Questions. Marcus himself mentions how the Pythagoreans would contemplate the heavens and sunrise in order to remind themselves of the idea of purity (Meditations, 11.27).

It’s designed, Socrates said, as a cure for a special kind of arrogance or conceit.

However, Socrates was the main influence on the Stoics. One ancient author described the Stoics as a “Socratic sect” and we can see Epictetus, the most famous Stoic teacher of ancient Rome, repeatedly telling his students to take Socrates as their supreme role model in life.

Socrates introduced a trademark style of questioning to philosophy, known today as the Socratic Method or Socratic Questioning. It was also called the elenchus or method of “refutation”, the name given to the cross-examination of witnesses in an Athenian law court. That’s because the method consists primarily in exposing contradictions in the statements of the individual being questioned. It’s designed, Socrates said, as a cure for a special kind of arrogance or conceit. This consists in believing that we know something, which in fact we do not know, about the most important things in life. By that he means exposing contradictions in our moral values, such as our definition of virtues like “justice”, “courage”, “piety”, “wisdom”, and so on.

This isn’t an “academic” exercise, though. Socrates makes it crystal clear that he thinks of it as a cure for illness in the soul, which works by talking rather than taking medicinal drugs. It’s what we call a “psychotherapy” and indeed that’s how later authors would describe it.

Stoic Therapy

The Stoics employed the Socratic Method of questioning. That’s the main reason that we think of Stoicism as a philosophy rather than a religion. In particular, we can see Epictetus employing the Socratic Method with his students. In one striking instance, Epictetus questions a magistrate about the beliefs that cause him to anxiously flee his sick daughter’s bedside. This man says, paradoxically, that he loved his little girl so much that he simply couldn’t bear to watch over her, while she was extremely ill and perhaps dying.

Epictetus examines whether this father’s views about what it’s natural and appropriate to do in such a situation are contradictory. Among other things, he asks the man whether he was acting toward his own daughter in the same way that he’d wish others to act toward him if he became sick.

Come then, if you were sick, would you wish your relations to be so affectionate, and all the rest, children and wife, as to leave you alone and deserted? By no means. — Discourses, 1.11

In modern cognitive therapy, we often do the same thing. It’s called the “Double Standards” strategy. Often, if not always, people begin to change their beliefs when they are forced to realize that they’re incompatible with one another, and that they’re contradicting themselves. Of course, consistency is a necessary but not sufficient condition of the truth. We can be free from contradictions and yet still wrong. However, one thing is for sure, we cannot be completely in the right while holding contradictory beliefs. So it’s a good enough starting point for moral self-examination and psychotherapy.

Marcus in Therapy

Socrates, and the Stoics, believed that the wise man was free of such contradictions. His mind had been purified by questioning, or self-examination, so that his values and judgments are totally consistent with one another. He doesn’t say one thing and do another, like a hypocrite. He doesn’t say one thing one day, and another thing the next. The Stoic Sage is pretty clear about what’s right and wrong. He’s not “all over the place” with his morals.

At one point, Marcus appears to describe the goal of Stoic therapy (Meditations, 3.8). He says that in the mind of one who has been critiqued (“chastened”, the word also means “pruned”) and purified (the word katharsis, cleansed) there is nothing corrupt or impure, or even any wound remaining beneath the surface. This is the radical ideal, toward which Stoic therapy works. Having attained wisdom, his life seems complete, and fulfilled. There is no longer anything servile about such a man, he says, nothing phoney. He’s neither overly-attached to anything in life, nor completely detached from things. There’s nothing blameworthy, or shameful within him, and therefore no more does he feel compelled to hide anything about himself.

The word therapeia also referred to the care exhibited to temples and gods by the pious. For Stoics, though, all men have a divine spark or spirit within them, called the daemon. So the religious and psychological uses of the word therapeia become fused into one. We can see this clearly in The Meditations, where Marcus says that men fall into a wretched state when they busy themselves about everything under the sun without grasping that what we should really be doing is paying attention to the daemon within ourselves.

And reverence [therapeia] of the daemon consists in keeping it pure from passion and thoughtlessness, and dissatisfaction with what comes from gods and men. For the things from the gods merit veneration for their excellence, and the things from men should be dear to us by reason of kinship. — Meditations, 2.13

In practice, the methods of Stoic therapy required giving another person, the therapist, permission to speak very frankly (parrhesia). Socrates’ companions found that his questions often left them feeling a sort of confusion (aporia). Some enjoyed the experience and found it liberating; others became angry and defensive.

Epictetus describes what it felt like to be morally cross-examined by his own teacher, the famous Stoic knight Musonius Rufus:

Rufus used to say: “If you have leisure to praise me, I am speaking to no purpose.” Accordingly he used to speak in such a way that every one of us who were sitting there supposed that someone had accused him before Rufus: he so touched on what was doing, he so placed before the eyes every man’s faults. The philosopher’s school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. — Discourses, 3.29

This might explain why Marcus says that, although he loved him dearly, he sometimes also found Rusticus, his Stoic mentor, provoked his anger. He gives thanks that:

Though I was often irritated with Rusticus, I never did anything of which I needed to repent. — Meditations, 1.17

We can perhaps infer some of the things Rusticus questioned Marcus about from the remarks he makes about him. The first thing Marcus says, though, is that having convinced him that he needed Stoic therapy, Rusticus persuaded him not to be led astray by the Sophists, or by his love of writing theoretical works. Rusticus also told Marcus to abandon writing moralizing speeches, like the Sophists, in which he poses as man of virtue. He was to stop pretending to be someone self-disciplined or making a big display of acts of benevolence, where this was being done to impress others. He was to focus on actually becoming a good man rather than just appearing to be one.

Rusticus also taught Marcus to communicate simply and honestly, without embellishing his words using rhetoric like, once again, a Sophist. Indeed, he largely quit writing fancy speeches and poetry. Marcus also stopped walking around the palace in his ceremonial robes, the purple of imperial office (toga picta), and began to dress more plainly, like an ordinary Roman citizen. These were all challenges to the young Caesar’s natural vanity.

Marcus was also prone, he says, to read books superficially, and too hastily to give his assent to people who had a way with words, perhaps the Sophists yet again. Rusticus was the one who got him out of these habits, teaching him to read patiently and carefully, and to think more deeply about the things he heard others say.

Intriguingly, Marcus adds that Rusticus got him reading certain notes instead about the lectures of Epictetus, “from his own personal collection.” I won’t review the evidence here, but it’s generally agreed this was probably a copy of The Discourses of Epictetus we know today. Of the original eight volumes, though, only four survive — Marcus appears to have also read the missing volumes.

As an aside, Arrian, who transcribed these discourses, wrote that he had originally intended them only for private circulation among friends. Arrian was appointed military governor of the Roman province of Cappadocia. A later author states that Junius Rusticus had served under Arrian in the Roman army, probably around 135 CE in the war against the Alani. So it’s possible that Marcus, as a young man, received a copy of The Discourses previously owned by Arrian, before these writings were widely-known or circulated in public. He got a sneak preview of what’s arguably the most important text ever written on Stoicism.

However, perhaps even more intriguingly, having told us that Rusticus sometimes provoked his anger, Marcus also says that it was this teacher who showed him how to conquer anger.

[From Rusticus, I learned] with respect to those who have offended me by words, or done me wrong, to be easily disposed to be pacified and reconciled, as soon as they have shown a readiness to be reconciled. — Meditations, 1.7

Rusticus perhaps had to provoke Marcus sometimes in order to really show him how to manage his temper. Indeed, The Meditations contains many references to Stoic techniques for overcoming anger. One passage even provides a master-list, which Marcus calls “Ten Gifts from Apollo and his Muses” (Meditations, 11.18). They draw upon the writings of Epictetus. It’s tempting to imagine that Marcus may have been taught them by Rusticus, his Stoic therapist.

Conclusion

We know that Rusticus died around 170 CE, at Rome, not long after Marcus had left to fight the First Marcomannic War, while he was probably stationed at Carnuntum, in modern-day Austria. As it happens, that’s around the time scholars believe Marcus began writing The Meditations.

We can safely assume that Marcus wrote many letters to his Stoic mentor and therapist, while he was away from Rome. We know that the death of Rusticus was experienced by him as a great loss. Perhaps at that point, he was forced to take over the role of becoming his own Stoic therapist. Instead of writing to Rusticus, he now wrote to himself. Indeed, The Meditations is a title chosen by modern editors. The earliest Greek manuscript of the text was titled simply To Himself.

Perhaps, the whole of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations can, therefore, be viewed as a continuation of the lifelong process of self-improvement and self-therapy that he began under the Stoic Junius Rusticus.

Thanks! I’ll add that quote to the article!

Socratic Questioning, Stoicism and a Return to Virtue Ethics

Socratic Questioning, Stoicism and a Return to Virtue Ethics

Why did an angry mob storm the U.S. Capitol Building on 6th January? Perhaps simply because it seemed to them like the right thing to do. In their own imagination, they were acting quite righteously, and felt completely justified in doing things that looked to the rest of the world like madness, and a form of insurrection.

One woman turned to a reporter and said excitedly: “We should all go in, get them, and teach them a lesson.”

On hearing the initial news that the building had been breached, the crowd protesting outside cheered loudly. One woman turned to a reporter and said excitedly: “We should all go in, get them, and teach them a lesson.” Indeed, hot tempers can turn many people into budding educationalists. Take moral confusion, stir in self-righteous anger, and what you end up with, though, is a recipe for all sorts of violence. (Check out the Instagram video of this article if you want to listen to me read it as well.)

A few hours earlier, the crowd had been marching along Pennsylvania Avenue, past the statue of Benjamin Franklin that stands outside what’s currently the Trump International Hotel. Ben Franklin’s reflective, philosophical attitude toward his own values stands in contrast to the brash confidence of the angry mob. They believed an outburst of violence would teach their political enemies a lesson. He believed the republic would flourish only if the freedoms secured by The Constitution could be lived with wisdom and virtue. In a letter dated 17th April 1787, he wrote:

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

Franklin therefore took the matter of improving his own character extremely seriously.

After reading the dialogues of Xenophon early in his twenties, Franklin fell in love with the Socratic method of questioning. At first he grilled other people, which they found quite irritating. Eventually, though, he realized that it was better to focus on questioning himself. He set about doing this systematically, for the rest of his life, as described in the part of his Autobiography titled Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection. Some of these values would be especially worth reviving in the Age of the Internet:

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

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

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

Despite the proliferation of self-help books and articles, in print and online, this type of rigorous moral self-examination is actually very rare in modern society. Many people have barely examined their own values and as a result their ethical compass is, arguably, quite broken. For Franklin, though, and the Greek philosophers who inspired him, the quest to develop a rational and coherent set of virtues was worthwhile in itself, and should perhaps even be our supreme goal. Indeed, Socrates famously went so far as to say that, in this regard, the unexamined life was not worth living.

The Socratic Method

Socrates named his method after the technique of cross-examination (elenchus) used in Athenian law courts, where, then as now, witnesses were questioned to expose problems with their testimony. We should rigorously interrogate ourselves, he thought, so that we may expose contradictions in our own morality. He also described this method as a therapy for the mind, using words rather than drugs — a “talking cure”, as we say today. It was designed to overcome a special type of arrogance: the belief that we know things we do not actually know about the most important aspects of life.

The method involves concisely explaining our view of justice, or some other virtue, and then carefully considering exceptions to that definition. Socrates asks an Athenian general how he defines courage, for instance, and he says that it means standing your ground in battle and not running. Socrates points out that, among other things, that wouldn’t apply to cavalry units, who charge at the enemy. So they begin to revise the definition. If we’re willing to question all of our values in this way, he said, we become more open minded. The Socratic method, in other words, was introduced as a remedy for moral conceit and self-righteousness.

This kind of self-examination has profound psychological implications. Socrates, and the Stoic philosophers who followed in his footsteps, realized that our feelings of anger are often rooted in our conception of justice. When we feel strongly that someone’s actions are unjust, it’s difficult not to become angry — they did something they shouldn’t have done. When we respond with anger, though, we tend to feel our own actions are morally just — we’re giving them what we think they deserve in return.

At the beginning of Plato’s Republic, Socrates tackles head-on the popular saying, in ancient Greece, that justice consists in “helping our friends and harming our enemies.” He applies his trademark method to this way of thinking in order to expose in it what he considers to be a fatal contradiction. The Greek philosophers say that anger is typically associated with the desire for revenge, harming our enemies. The protestor at Capitol Hill who said “We should all go in, get them, and teach them a lesson”, was putting her revenge fantasy into words. However, the cliche she adopted hints at what Socrates saw as the central paradox of anger — is it a desire to improve things or make them worse?

Any outside observer to an argument will tell you that anger has a tendency to bring about the complete opposite of what it desires — like the mom yelling “Stop crying now!” at her toddler in the supermarket. For the most part, anger is counter-productive, especially when it comes to solving complex interpersonal or social problems. Likewise, paradoxically, armed militia groups in the US who claim to be defending constitution are the ones currently placing freedom and democracy most at risk.

It appears that these groups want to generate the very crisis they claim to be concerned about: a confrontation with the government. — Mick Mulroy, ‘Will there be an American insurgency’, ABC News

Time will tell but it’s likely that storming the Capitol Building also achieved the opposite of what those protestors wanted.

“Do good to our friends and make friends of our enemies” was universally conceded to be one of Socrates’ maxims.

So do we want to harm our enemies or educate them? “Which is better,” asks Socrates, “to live among bad citizens, or among good ones?” Nobody wants evil neighbours. No rational person would, therefore, intentionally corrupt and worsen the characters of their own fellow-citizens. They would merely harm themselves in doing so. Anger, though, is the desire to cause harm, or at least it’s typically at odds with the desire to do good. That’s why it usually leads to escalation. Angry people often behave irrationally, as if they want to make their enemies worse and create more of them — and they easily succeed in doing so.

We see it every day on the Internet. Peter says something that hurts Paul’s feelings. Paul gets angry and says something nasty back, because he wants to hurt Peter’s feelings. Peter, now more hurt and enraged, does the same back. And so it goes on, with the level of hostility often rapidly spiralling out of control. In recent years, hatred being fomented online has started to colour political discourse in general. It’s now given birth to a level of mutual contempt between factions that’s bordering, at times, on mass hysteria, as the incident at Capitol Hill shows.

If you really believe that something is bad for society then, logically, you should be strongly motivated to make things better, not worse. Socrates hints at but holds back from stating the conclusion of his argument in the Republic. However, Plutarch, a later philosopher wrote that “Do good to our friends and make friends of our enemies” was universally conceded to be one of Socrates’ maxims.

Ending Quarrels

If only the female protestor who wanted to “teach them a lesson” had meant that literally. She would have been fulfilling her duty as a citizen, for instance, if she believed an injustice had been done and tried her best to provide evidence. Instead, her anger and intolerance led her to join a mob who were doing the opposite, seeking to cause harm rather than to actually “teach” anyone anything. At the end of the day, their acts of violence are likely to make those who disagree with them more hostile, to create more enemies, and more potential for conflict.

In a sense, she didn’t know whether she wanted to help her perceived enemies or harm them, make them better or make them worse. If she’d followed the Socratic method, like Franklin whose statue she probably walked past that day, it would have led her to question the contradictions in her own moral reasoning. It could also have helped her to focus more on her own character, and making best use of the lawful and rational means within her own control.

Five centuries after Socrates’ death, the Stoic philosopher Epictetus told his students that they should dedicate their lives to emulating him. The main lesson he thought they could learn from Socrates might surprise you. “The wise and good man neither himself fights with any person,” Epictetus says, “nor does he allow another, so far as he can prevent it.” Socrates, he says, provides the best example of this. He exhibited extraordinary tolerance and self-control, never becoming angry with others even when they were insulting him. He was able to have penetrating conversations with others about their deepest values, questioning even their conception of what is just, while still remaining civilized and friendly.

What was his secret? Epictetus says that Socrates always remembered that other people’s opinions were up to them, and not directly under his control. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. He therefore placed more importance on improving himself than upon trying to influence others. Not even a political tyrant, says Epictetus, can stop me from taking responsibility for my own character and actions. If we really loved wisdom and could stand to talk about it rationally with others, while tolerating their freedom to disagree, we wouldn’t be in this mess. The Socratic belief that virtue is the main thing in life, says Epictetus, brings about “love in a family, concord in a state, peace among nations, and gratitude to God.”

Socratic Questioning, Stoicism and a Return to Virtue Ethics

Why did an angry mob storm the U.S. Capitol Building on 6th January? Perhaps simply because it seemed to them like the right thing to do. In their own imagination, they were acting quite righteously, and felt completely justified in doing things that looked to the rest of the world like madness, and a form of insurrection.

On hearing the initial news that the building had been breached, the crowd protesting outside cheered loudly. One woman turned to a reporter and said excitedly: “We should all go in, get them, and teach them a lesson.” Indeed, hot tempers can turn many people into budding educationalists. Take moral confusion, stir in self-righteous anger, and what you end up with, though, is a recipe for all sorts of violence.

A few hours earlier, the crowd had been marching along Pennsylvania Avenue, past the statue of Benjamin Franklin that stands outside what’s currently the Trump International Hotel. Ben Franklin’s reflective, philosophical attitude toward his own values stands in contrast to the brash confidence of the angry mob. They believed an outburst of violence would teach their political enemies a lesson. He believed the republic would flourish only if the freedoms secured by The Constitution could be lived with wisdom and virtue. Franklin therefore took the matter of improving his own character extremely seriously.

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