Category: Stoicism

Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear… and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history. — Emerson, Self-Reliance

The American poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the leading figures of the Transcendentalist movement in the mid 19th century. There is some basic theoretical common ground between Stoic philosophy and Emerson’s writings, most notably that Emerson appears to believe that virtue is its own reward, a fundamental doctrine of Stoicism. For instance, he wrote:

The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough. — Heroism

That “virtue is enough” is something an ancient Stoic could easily have written. For the Stoics, virtue is the only true good and the belief, which they inherited from Socrates, that it is sufficient in itself for the good life is a cornerstone of their distinctive ethical position.

The quote above from Self-Reliance makes it clear that Emerson admires the Stoics. He also says in the same excerpt that Stoicism teaches “that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him.”

Rather than carry out a detailed analysis of the parallels between Emerson’s thought and Stoic philosophy, though, I want to begin by accomplishing the more modest task of summarizing what he explicitly says about them. There are probably more references to the Stoics in his writings than most people realize. Emerson frequently mentions important precursors of Stoicism such as Socrates, Xenophon, and Diogenes the Cynic, as well as Academic philosophers influenced by them such as Cicero and Plutarch. He mentions the Stoics Epictetus and Seneca. However, the one he says most about is Marcus Aurelius, or as he sometimes calls him, using the cognomen of his imperial dynasty, Marcus Antoninus.

Read the full article on Medium.

Lessons on Emotional Resilience from the Dartmouth PATH Programs

Are you looking for something to do in self-isolation during the coronavirus pandemic? How about completing the same training in emotional resilience used by astronauts?

The PATH Program is an online course developed at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA. During the pandemic, while a lot of us are locked down, it has been made available free of charge to the general public.

It’s not easy for most astronauts to adapt to living for prolonged periods in space, in a confined space, with limited social contact, surrounded by danger. The authors of the PATH program figured that individuals struggling to cope with the stress of self-isolation during the pandemic might benefit from the same kind of psychological techniques used by NASA to prepare astronauts for a mission. It’s already been tested on researchers stationed in the Antarctic, another group facing the stress of isolation in a daunting environment.

Jay Buckley, a professor of medicine at Dartmouth, is one of the creators of the program. As a former NASA astronaut himself, who spent sixteen days in space on the shuttle Columbia, Buckley has first-hand knowledge of these stressors. He recently told The Guardian newspaper:

It’s challenging to be isolated with a small group of people and to not be able to get away. Outer space and your own living room might be drastically different physically, but emotionally the stressors can be the same.

Anyone can now enroll online for the PATH program free of charge. My background is in cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) and Stoic philosophy. I’m the author of several books on philosophy and psychology, including a CBT and Stoic philosophy based self-help guide called Build your Resilience. Several people got in touch with me asking me what I thought about the PATH program as a means of developing emotional resilience so I decided to write a quick review.

How the Program Works

There are four main sections and lots of additional resources. You can work through the content at your own pace and select the parts that seem most relevant to you. The main topics covered are:

1. Guided self-assessment

2. Conflict resolution

3. Mood management for depression

4. Stress management and resilience-building

The guided self-assessment section is the best place to start if you’re not sure what you need. It takes you through a series of interactive questions. Your responses are used to help you choose which skills you should learn next, e.g., you might be steered toward conflict resolution training if you’re struggling with interpersonal problems.

The conflict resolution part of the course contains videos and online exercises to help you learn basic communication skills designed to help resolve arguments and other problems with other people. The mood management section of the course mainly focuses on an evidence-based approach called problem-solving training (PST), which is very versatile and can be effective in treating certain forms of depression.

The stress management section will help you learn a variety of well-established cognitive-behavioural techniques used for coping with anger, anxiety, and other strong emotions, and for building general emotional resilience. We’ll look at the stress management content in a bit more detail because it’s probably the section that’s going to be of most interest to members of the general public accessing the course.

Stress and Resilience

I’m a big fan of problem-solving training, the approach that’s also used here for depression, so I was glad to see it included in the stress management section as well. Basically all of these techniques fall under the heading of “cognitive-behavioural therapy”, understood in a broad sense. It’s not exactly what you’d do with a cognitive-behavioural therapist but most of these techniques have been used for decades by researchers and clinicians working to help people manage stress and build emotional resilience.

There are other cognitive-behavioural techniques you could learn, e.g., more recent ones that fall under the heading sometimes called “mindfulness and acceptance-based therapy”. The methods taught in this course are pretty well-established, though, and good enough for most people. If you’re more into mindfulness or looking for something a little bit different then you might want to explore other courses. However, the skills taught in here will provide a solid foundation for many people.

The training is moderately thorough but I would think that some people might get a little bit lost in the weeds, if they’re not careful. That’s where the guided self-assessment probably helps because it should direct you toward the parts of the course most relevant to you. You don’t need to complete the whole thing and trying to do so might be overwhelming in some cases. Just focus on the aspects that you think will help you the most. Many people benefit from courses like this just by taking away one concept or technique that really strikes a chord, although learning more may benefit you more.

Compartmentalizing

I actually found this part very interesting because it’s a little bit different from the techniques to which I’m used. It teaches you how to focus attention on an upsetting image for a few minutes and then “compartmentalize” that concern and move your attention on to another task, such as completing a quiz. I find that some therapists have a very simplistic black-and-white attitude that says that any attempt to distract or remove attention from a distressing thought must be bad. That’s absurd, though, because, as the creators of this course understand, it’s completely natural for us to set aside upsetting thoughts sometimes in order to concentrate on other things for a while.

Sometimes other thoughts have to take priority and the ability to compartmentalize our thinking in this way would obviously be essential in a high-stress situation like a space mission. It also serves us well in life generally. For example, we all need to be able to “turn off” worries sometimes to be able to fall asleep at night. If you’re caring for a small child, likewise, you might need to be able to put aside dwelling on upsetting things whenever the child requires your full attention. That’s completely natural but some people are better at doing it than others. You can learn this skill and the simple exercises in this course strike me as a great way of training in it.

Of course, once you’ve learned to set aside upsetting thoughts for a while, you need to be able to come back to them later to ensure you’re not just engaging in unhealthy avoidance. Choosing when and where you think about something is not the same thing as avoidance. Often, though, people find that if they ask themselves “Does this still seem important?” a few hours later the answer may be “not really.” Sometimes our worries seem important at the time but when we come back to them later, in a different frame of mind, they might seem irrelevant, trivial, or easily resolved. Even if that’s not the case, returning to a worry or upsetting memory at a time of your choosing can help you approach it more calmly and rationally, adopting a more constructive perspective. That leads nicely into another stress management approach included here: problem-solving.

Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving isn’t generally a well-known approach but it’s been around since the early 1970s in the cognitive-behavioural tradition and is supported by a large volume of scientific evidence. It teaches creative and rational approaches to finding solutions, which have an incredibly wide range of applications and are known to help with stressful situations and also in treating clinical depression. Typically, problem-solving training consists in:

1. Adopting the healthy attitude toward finding solutions, the characteristics of which psychologists have actually managed to define in some detail based on research in this area.

2. Defining the problem your facing clearly, concisely, and objectively — which is actually, the key step for many people: a problem well-defined is half-solved.

3. Brainstorming alternative solutions, which you can choose between — again there’s some helpful research in this area and there’s even reason to believe that the ability to do this well and maintain a flexible perspective may reduce stress for some people.

4. Evaluate those solutions rationally, and there are different methods for doing that, but mainly it involves weighing up the short and long term consequences, the pros and cons of each option.

5. Carrying out an action plan, by testing out the best solution, or a combination of different options, in practice and then carefully reviewing the results.

Now, there’s a very solid basis for this systematic approach to problem-solving, and each of these steps can be gone into in a lot more depth, drawing on well-established psychological research and various helpful techniques. However, problem-solving can also become overly-laborious sometimes if you try to evaluate everything to the maximum possible degree. Sometimes we need to be able to solve problems more quickly and spontaneously to function well in life. So in my experience, the secret is to learn the (superb) methodology that psychologists have developed over the past half century for rational problem-solving, and maybe practice it several times to acquire skill and confidence in each component, while being prepared to abbreviate it and speed the process up later, if necessary.

Focused Breathing and Guided Muscle Relaxation

There’s less to say about this because it’s such a simple technique but guided audio exercises like the ones in this course are a great way to learn very simple breathing exercises for relaxation. Relaxation techniques in general are not popular at the moment in the field of psychotherapy because there’s concern that clients with severe problems tend to use them too much to suppress feelings of anxiety in an avoidant manner rather than learning to experience them in more healthy ways. However, my belief is that for the majority of people, who are facing mild stress rather than suffering from a diagnosable mental health problem, relaxation techniques are harmless and can be extremely beneficial.

The relaxation method taught here is basically a version of simple abdominal breathing, which is one of the very easiest approaches to learn. It leads naturally into learning the slightly more elaborate process of guided muscle relaxation, which also lends itself very well to being taught through online audio recordings like these. In fact, the two methods are very complementary as learning to relax through abdominal breathing and by relaxing your muscles are distinct techniques but each one tends to make the other easier to learn, with practice. Muscle relaxation is also an old behaviour therapy technique, not exactly cutting edge, but again there’s a large body of scientific evidence going back decades that speaks to its various benefits.

Resilience Through Writing

This is also slightly different from the way we’d normally do things in CBT but this simple approach lends itself to learning resilience online, I think. The idea is just to spend five minutes or so writing in depth about your deepest concerns — whatever stresses you. They’re rightly confident in saying that the very act of writing can, sometimes but not always, be therapeutic. It takes longer to write things down, and requires using your brain differently. That alone can bring out new insights and force you to experience problems from a different perspective.

The caveat I would add is that for some people this might not be the best approach. For example, pathological worriers will sometimes just use writing as a way of over-thinking things. You can help counter that, though, by encouraging yourself when writing to phrase things slightly differently. For instance, often we’ll ask clients to write a description of a problem in more objective language, avoiding strong value judgements or emotive phrases where possible. That can often help you problem-solve and “decatastrophize’ a worrying situation, so that you see it in a more down to earth way. Another mind-trick would be to write a description of a situation as if from the perspective of someone you admire, perhaps even a fictional character, such as someone wiser or more confident.

Exploring different perspectives in writing can help expand our mind in a way that transforms the stress response and it can also help us think of creative solutions. However, the basic method taught in this course is just to focus on writing freely about a stressful event and getting your feelings down on the page, for about 15 minutes a day, over 3–4 days. It’s true that alone will benefit many people.

In psychotherapy we tend to tailor things for individual clients but sometimes I find that actually leads to overcomplicating the process. Research consistently shows that simple exercises of the kind that can be taught in a few minutes, such as some of the ones in this course, can benefit most people, if not everyone. So they’re definitely worth trying, especially if you’re the sort of person who just likes to be told how to do something in plain language so that you can go away, test it out in practice, and experiment with it yourself.

Conclusion

It’s worth going and having a look at the PATH program online, if you’re interested in learning some of these skills. Someone who really immerses themself in these exercises will definitely feel the benefit. Like most elearning, you’ll get back out of it what you put into it. For a lot of people the audio and video will be a novel way of learning psychological exercises. (Although you need to be aware that some of them focus on examples designed for astronauts — such as how to resolve arguments with mission control!)

It might take you roughly half an hour a day for a couple of weeks to complete the course, depending on how much of the content you want to work through. Of course, you can also just dip freely in and out of different sections like I did for my review. There are also PDF manuals you can download and read, containing descriptions of most of the exercises, which some people will find very helpful. If you really want to see the benefit of these type of exercises, though, it does help to treat them a bit like doing physical exercises, such as sit-ups, and set aside at least five or ten minutes for practice each day over the course of a week or two.

If you’re cooped up this is definitely a good way of learning to cope with stress and build your resilience. So, no, you don’t have to be an astronaut to benefit from it!

Research on Stoic Mindfulness and Resilience Training (SMRT)

Research on Stoic Mindfulness and Resilience Training (SMRT)

One of my main areas of research is the relationship between Stoic philosophy and modern psychology. I’m particularly interested in the promise that Stoicism appears to hold as a form of what psychologists today call “resilience training”. As we’ll see, there are some interesting data emerging from initial research on Stoicism as a form of resilience training.

Emotional or psychological resilience basically refers to our ability to endure stressful events, without being overwhelmed by them. Through cognitive and behaviour skills training we can improve resilience and prepare ourselves to cope better with future adversity.

In a sense, Stoicism has long been virtually synonymous with resilience. Indeed, one modern expert, Michael Neenan, refers to the Stoic teacher Epictetus as the “patron saint of the resilient”. In one of my own books on Stoicism and CBT, Build your Resilience, I wrote,

As we’ve seen, when we speak of someone having a “philosophical attitude” in the face of adversity, this figure of speech, which alludes to a kind of emotional resilience, probably stems from the Stoic philosophy in particular. The literature of Stoicism is essentially all about coping with precisely the kind of adversities studied in modern research on resilience: poverty, bereavement, illness, etc. So, at least on the face of it, the connection between ancient Stoicism and modern resilience-building seems obvious. — Robertson, Build your Resilience

Recently I co-authored an article in The Behavior Therapist, reviewing in-depth the relationship between ancient Stoicism and modern cognitive-behavioural therapy. We concluded:

Stoicism offers people a permanent alternative to their existing worldview, which is aligned with CBT in many regards, and might provide a framework for changes that could endure long after initial exposure to them through books and courses. Our hope is that in the future research may be conducted on the potential applications of combined Stoicism and CBT based training courses as a form of long-term emotional resilience-building. —Robertson & Codd, Stoic Philosophy as a Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

The basic theoretical premise of cognitive-behavioural therapy was derived, in part, from Stoic philosophy. It’s called the “cognitive theory of emotion” and holds that our emotions are determined, to a large extent, by corresponding beliefs, i.e., cognitions. The founders of cognitive therapy, especially Albert Ellis, used to teach that principle to their students and clients by quoting the Stoic philosopher Epictetus:

“It’s not events that upset us but rather our opinions about them.” — Epictetus

The other main pioneer of CBT, Aaron T. Beck, opened his first book on cognitive therapy by describing how his emerging style of therapy was founded upon the consensus among researchers that cognitions play a central role in determining our emotions. Then, like Ellis, he added:

Nevertheless, the philosophical underpinnings go back thousands of years, certainly to the time of the Stoics, who considered man’s conceptions (or misconceptions) of events rather than the events themselves as the key to his emotional upsets. (Beck A. T., 1976, p. 3)

This shared premise arguably means that the large volumes of scientific evidence now supporting cognitive therapy also lend some degree of indirect support to Stoicism.

CBT is typically remedial — it’s a therapy. With some exceptions, it’s normally short-term and diagnosis-driven. When people receive a diagnosis and therapy, it’s because they’re already suffering from problems. However, the Holy Grail of mental health is prevention — prevention, as everyone knows, is better than cure. Psychologists try to reduce their risk of individuals experiencing future mental health problems through emotional resilience training. However, so far that’s had mixed results because although resilience training is beneficial, it tends to wear off over time, and people need refresher courses every few years.

People who get into Stoicism, though, tend to stick with it for the long term because rather than a set of techniques it actually provides them with a whole philosophy of life. We like to phrase this by saying that “Stoicism is sticky”, in fact it’s often permanent. We need to carry out psychological research to actually test that hypothesis, though.

Research on Stoicism and Resilience Training

There’s not much psychological research focusing directly on Stoicism. However, since around 2012, the Modern Stoicism organization has been gathering data from many thousands of participants around the world, participants in free online courses. Modern Stoicism is a nonprofit organization run by a multidisciplinary team of volunteers, including cognitive-behavioural therapists, philosophers, and classicists. It’s responsible for organizing the annual Stoicon conference on Modern Stoicism. I am one of the founding members and as well as being one of the creators of the Stoic Week annual event, I also designed a course called Stoic Mindfulness and Resilience Training or SMRT.

SMRT is a four-week long intensive psychological skills training, delivered in the form of elearning. We first ran it in 2014, when about 500 people took part and since then thousands more have completed the training. Participants complete detailed questionnaires. I created the first version of the Stoic Attitudes and Behaviours Scale (SABS), which has subsequently been refined by psychologists using statistical methods to ensure its validity. We use that scale to measure how strongly participants exhibit typical Stoic beliefs and behaviours. However, we also used established psychological questionnaires, of the kind employed in CBT studies and other psychological research, to evaluate the impact of SMRT on positive and negative mood, as well as measures of psychological well-being and life satisfaction.

This is the first time I’ve written about the data from SMRT because these are simply initial pilot studies. They were mainly intended to test the feasibility of using this sort of course in other well-controlled research studies. It’s now clear that we have a protocol suitable for testing. However, we can also say that the initial data are highly promising, although our findings require confirmation using more rigorous research methods.

Initial Research Findings from SMRT

SMRT first ran in 2014, when just over 500 people took part. The outcome measures used before and after training showed mean improvements as follows:

• Satisfaction with life increased by 27%

• Positive emotions increased by 16%

• Negative emotions reduced by ­23%

• Flourishing increased by 17%

We noticed that overall results were similar to those reported by participants in Stoic Week, our other online course. However, perhaps because SMRT is four times longer, and more focused on core skills, improvements tended to be approximately twice as large as those following Stoic Week.

The results become even more interesting when we look at individual questionnaire items. Across studies, we’ve consistently found Stoicism has as a improving effect on measures of both positive and negative mood, although the effect on negative mood is always more pronounced. The emotions which increased most in the initial SMRT study were feelings of being “Positive” and “Contented”. The emotions which decreased most were those labelled as feeling “Negative” and “Sad”.

Follow-up Research on SMRT

In 2017, in order to provisionally check the feasibility of the SMRT training as a means of acquiring longer-term resilience, Tim LeBon analyzed the data from a new group of over 900 participants at 3-month follow-up. The report concluded:

Participants were found to have significant improvements in all measures at the end of the course. Particularly of note is the 20% reduction in negative emotions (SPANE-). The key question we were looking to answer was “how much would these improvements melt away in the 3 months after SMRT finished?” It was found that there was very little reduction in benefit even after 3 months. For SABS (measuring degree of Stoicism) and Flourish (measuring flourishing) there was barely any change. In terms of emotions and satisfaction with life there was a small reduction compared to the end of the course. This result suggests that practising Stoicism for as little as a month has a lasting impact.

This was just another pilot study, and its findings need to be confirmed by more carefully controlled outcome studies in the future, using control groups, etc. However, the results certainly appeared to show that it was worth exploring the hypothesis further that training in Stoicism could be effective as a means of developing lasting emotional resilience.

If you’re interested in finding out more, see the main webpage for Stoic Mindfulness and Resilience Training. The course is enrolling now and will be running again in a few weeks’ time.

What did the Stoic Emperor Think of his Adoptive Grandfather?

What did the Stoic Emperor Think of his Adoptive Grandfather?

In book one of The Meditations, Marcus Aurelius lists the traits and virtues he most admired in sixteen of his tutors and family members. The person he has by far the most to say about is his adoptive father, Emperor Antoninus Pius, who served as his main role model as emperor. However, in striking contrast, Marcus has nothing to say about the virtues of his adoptive grandfather, the emperor Hadrian.

I talk in more detail about the ways in which Marcus apparently sought to be different from Hadrian, and more like Antoninus Pius, in my book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. Many of the things Marcus says he admires about Antoninus can be viewed as implicit criticisms of Hadrian, despite the fact he’s passing over him in silence.

Nevertheless, Marcus does mention Hadrian elsewhere in The Meditations, albeit mainly to illustrate the transience of all things including human life. Hadrian died over three decades before the time when The Meditations was presumably written.

Although Marcus knew Hadrian as a child, his name now sounds old-fashioned as if it refers to a bygone era. Everyday expressions from earlier times now sound archaic, he says, just like the names of men who were once highly acclaimed. Marcus names eight, including two famous Stoics of the Roman Republic, Scipio Africanus and Cato the Younger. He also includes the first emperor of Rome, Augustus, and even his own predecessor, Antoninus, the most recent emperor. However, this list also includes the name of Hadrian, which has already begun to sound to Marcus like something from the history books. Having noted this, he adds:

For all things are swift to fade and become mere matter for tales, and swiftly too complete oblivion covers their every trace. And here I am speaking of those who shone forth with a wonderful brightness; as for all the rest, the moment that they breathed their last, they were ‘out of sight, out of mind’. And what does it amount to, in any case, everlasting remembrance? Sheer vanity and nothing more. — Meditations, 4.33

Hadrian desperately wanted to be remembered as a great man but why, asks Marcus, should we consider this worth striving for? Rather, only a mind governed by justice and actions directed toward the common good, are worth pursuing, words that never lie, and an attitude welcoming all that happens as necessary, familiar, and flowing from the same source.

In another passage, Hadrian is used along with Augustus as an example of a man of great importance who is nevertheless now dead and gone.

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

Marcus tells himself that he should therefore keep his eyes fixed on the matter in hand and remember that it is his duty to be a good person, and do whatever reason and justice demands, to the best of his ability, without the slightest hesitation. He adds that we should do so with kindness and modesty, though, and, perhaps unlike Hadrian, without false pretences.

Elsewhere, Marcus meditates on the fact that his mother Domitia Lucilla buried his father, Annius Verus, and then it was Lucilla’s turn herself to be buried by another. Antoninus Pius buried his wife the Empress Faustina, and was in turn buried himself. And so it goes on, Marcus says, always the same.

Celer buried Hadrian, and Celer’s turn came next. […] All creatures of a day, and dead long ago; some not remembered even for a passing moment, others becoming the stuff of legend, and others again fading from legend at this very time. — Meditations, 8.25

Remember, therefore, Marcus adds, that whether our bodies are merely dispersed into their elements by nature, or we continue somewhere else, in an afterlife, either way our breath of life is extinguished and our mortal existence will inevitably come to an end.

Marcus also asks whether his dead brother, the co-emperor Lucius Verus’ lover, Panthea, is still mourning by the side of his coffin, several years after his death. Of course not, he says, that would be ridiculous. Likewise, he says it would be absurd to imagine two men, Chabrias and Diotimus, still mourning the death of Hadrian. (Roman tradition put a time limit on mourning.)

Pantheia or Pergamos, are they still sitting by the coffin of Verus? Or Chabrias or Diotimus by that of Hadrian? What an absurd thought. — Meditations, 8.37

Even if they were, Marcus says, the dead wouldn’t be aware of it. It makes no difference to them how much they are mourned once they’re gone. Even if they could be conscious of being mourned, how could that bring them any pleasure? Even if it did, their mourners will die eventually themselves. “So what would the dead do afterwards,” he asks, “when their mourners had passed away?” Men like Hadrian wanted to be celebrated by future generations but what good does it really do them, and how long can it continue anyway?

Finally, Marcus actually encourages himself to visualize the court of Hadrian and notice how the same things come about over and over again throughout history, albeit in different guises.

Constantly reflect on how all that comes about at present came about just the same in days gone by, and reflect that it will continue to do so in the future; and set before your eyes whole dramas and scenes ever alike in their nature which you have known from your own experience or the records of earlier ages, the whole court of Hadrian, say, or of Antoninus, the whole court of Philip, or Alexander, or Croesus; for in every case the play was the same, and only the actors were different. — Meditations, 10.27

It’s striking therefore, as we’ve seen, that Marcus heaps praise on the emperor Antoninus Pius, and lists his virtues in great detail, more than once, but has nothing positive to say about Hadrian. Hadrian is mentioned but only as a reminder of the transience of human life — a memento mori.

If anything, for Marcus, Hadrian serves as an example of a somewhat naive and self-centred ruler who failed to appreciate the limits of power and reputation when viewed from the perspective of eternity. In his letters to Marcus, the rhetorician Marcus Cornelius Fronto seems guarded about criticizing Hadrian — he says he admired him rather than loving him. At one point he tells Marcus that “Hadrian’s speech affects a spurious pretence of ancient eloquence”, i.e., that Hadrian was a pretentious speaker who affected an old-fashioned style of rhetoric. Marcus seems to think we should be less concerned about appearances and how others will remember us than Hadrian was. For Marcus, it’s more important to be concerned about trying to actually live in accord with reason and virtue.

For several years, I’ve been researching and writing about the life of Marcus Aurelius. In addition to being one of the more likeable…

How The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Teaches us to Cope

What if there was a manual that told you how to cope with the stress of living during a pandemic?

For several years, I’ve been researching and writing about the life of Marcus Aurelius. In addition to being one of the more likeable Roman emperors, Marcus happens to be the last famous Stoic philosopher of antiquity. However, he spent the last fourteen years of his life dealing with one of the worst plagues in European history, which eventually killed him.

The Antonine Plague, as it’s known today, is given the cognomen or dynastic name that follows his family name, i.e., Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. Most scholars believe that it was probably caused by a strain of the smallpox virus. It’s estimated to have killed up to five million people.

From 166 AD to around 180 AD, and perhaps beyond, cities and military camps across the empire suffered one outbreak of the virus after another. We know about it mainly from the writings of Galen, Marcus’ famous court physician, many of whose writings survive today. The Romans figured out that the disease was carried in the air they breathed because one of the main symptoms, an ulcerating rash, typically appeared at the back of the throat before breaking out on the face and body. However, they had no idea how to prevent the spread of infection. Apart from making sacrifices to Apollo, the god of plague, their answer was to burn incense everywhere in an effort to purify the contaminated air. That didn’t help. Their historians describe entire towns and villages being depopulated and turning to ruins. Rome itself was particularly badly affected, and carts left the city piled high with bodies being removed for burial every day.

In the middle of this plague, Marcus wrote a book which today we call The Meditations. The earliest surviving manuscript was actually titled To Himself, because it records the moral and psychological advice he gave himself at this time. Although he only mentions the plague explicitly once in these writings, he frequently applies Stoic philosophy to the challenges of coping with pain, illness, anxiety, and loss. Marcus didn’t survive the plague named after him. He was (probably) one of its victims. However, we can certainly learn from the way he coped, for over a decade, with daily life under these pressures.

It’s no stretch of the imagination to view The Meditations as an ancient training manual for developing precisely those mental resilience skills required to get through a pandemic.

The Stoic Guidance

There’s a lot of advice in The Meditations. It’s based upon the central ethical doctrine of Stoicism: virtue is the only true good. In plain English, the Stoics believed that the most important thing in life is a kind of moral wisdom. This forms the basis of “virtues” or character traits such as justice, kindness, fairness, courage, and self-discipline — the sort of qualities we often admire in other people.

Authentic happiness (eudaimonia) consists in the sort of genuine fulfilment that comes from making an effort to live in accord with core values such as these. That has to be distinguished from the superficial sense of happiness we get from sensory pleasures or from being praised by other people. The majority of us spend our lives pursuing “external” goods, as the Stoics call them — things like health, wealth, and reputation. Socrates, the godfather of ancient Stoicism, had long ago argued that these things can’t be good in themselves, though. For example, wealth might appear to be good when it’s used wisely. However, in the hands of a tyrant, someone vicious and foolish, wealth becomes more of a bad thing because it enables them to do more harm to themselves and others.

The foundation stone of Stoic ethics is therefore the idea that wealth, and other such things, are at best external advantages or opportunities. They don’t constitute the real goal of life, though, as they can be used either wisely or foolishly. Wealth is the most obvious example, perhaps. Misers love money and view it as an end in itself. The wise view money as merely a means to an end, worthless in its own right. It’s easy to lose sight of that, though.

The Stoics recognized that health is a more challenging example. However, the health and fitness of a serial killer or a genocidal dictator isn’t really a good thing. It just allows them to live longer, and do more evil things with their lives. Health and long life give us more opportunity to act according to our own moral character, whether good or bad. The Stoics thought it was rational to “prefer” health over sickness but the wise can potentially benefit from either. You’d be surprised how many people say that, paradoxically, a brush with death, either through illness or some dangerous situation, transformed them for the better and made them more grateful and appreciative of life.

The Dichotomy of Control

The practice of Stoicism entails many psychological techniques to help its followers remind themselves of this basic moral truth and apply it to specific situations. First of all, because our true good resides in our own character and actions, Stoics frequently remind themselves to distinguish between what’s “up to us” and what isn’t in any given situation. Modern Stoics tend to call this “The Dichotomy of Control” and many people find this distinction alone helpful in alleviating stress. What happens to me is never directly under my control, never completely up to me, but my own thoughts and actions are — at least the voluntary ones. The pandemic isn’t really under my control but the way I behave in response to it is. Keeping this distinction clear helps Stoics to let go of worry about things they can’t control. It also encourages them to focus upon, and take more responsibility for, their own actions.

Cognitive Therapy

“It’s not events that upset us but rather our opinions about them”, more specifically our judgement that something is really bad, awful, or even catastrophic. This is one of the basic psychological principles of Stoicism. It’s also the basic premise of modern cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), the leading evidence-based form of psychotherapy. Indeed, the pioneers of CBT, Albert Ellis and Aaron T. Beck, both describe Stoicism as the original philosophical inspiration for their approach. Our actions are up to us but so is much, if not all, of our thinking. Stoics take responsibility for their value judgements and avoid fusing them with external events, remaining mindful of the way our thinking shapes our emotions. It’s not the virus that makes us afraid, for instance, but rather our opinions about it. Neither is it the inconsiderate actions of others, such as partygoers ignoring social distancing recommendations, that makes us angry but rather our opinions about them.

Modelling Coping

Many people are struck, on reading The Meditations, by the fact that it opens with a chapter in which Marcus lists in considerable detail the qualities he most admires in other individuals, about seventeen friends, members of his family, and teachers. This is an extended example, though, of one of the central practices of Stoicism. Marcus likes to ask himself “What virtue has nature given me to deal with this situation?” In modern psychotherapy we might ask “What resources do you have that might help you to cope with the pandemic?” That naturally leads to the question “How do other people cope with similar challenges?” Stoics reflect on strengths (“virtues”) such as patience, self-discipline, planning, which potentially make them more resilient in the face of adversity. They try to exemplify these character traits and bring them to bear on the challenges they face in daily life, during a crisis like the pandemic. They learn from how other people cope — whether they’re friends, family members, colleagues, or strangers. Even historical figures or fictional characters can potentially serve as role models.

Marcus’ Teachers

Marcus specifically mentions how two of his role models coped with illness, possibly the plague. He meditates on the way his foremost Stoic teacher, Apollonius of Chalcedon, remained exactly the same man, unfazed and unshaken, during severe pain and long illness. Apollonius showed Marcus how to act decisively, guided by reason, while nevertheless remaining relaxed about external events beyond his direct control. Another of Marcus’ personal tutors, a highly-accomplished Roman statesman called Claudius Maximus, taught him how to be self-reliant and remain cheerful during a terminal illness. Marcus was clearly affected by the “invincible character” exhibited by this tough Stoic and veteran military commander as he lay dying. Elsewhere Marcus thanks the gods that he was fortunate enough to have known Apollonius and Maximus personally. They provided him with real flesh-and-blood examples of virtue and a template for applying Stoicism as a way of life.

Contrasting Consequences

With all of this in mind, it’s easier to understand another common slogan of Stoicism: fear does us more harm than the things of which we’re afraid. This applies to unhealthy emotions in general, which the Stoics term “passions” — from pathos, the source of our word “pathological”. It’s true, first of all, in a superficial sense. Even if you have a 99% chance, or more, of surviving the pandemic, worry and anxiety may be ruining your life and driving you crazy. In extreme cases some people may even take their own lives because of the distress. In that respect, it’s easy to see how fear can do us more harm than the things of which we’re afraid because it can impinge on our physical health and quality of life.

However, this saying also has a deeper meaning for Stoics. The virus can only harm your body — the worst it can do is kill you. However, fear penetrates into the very core of our being. It can destroy your humanity if you let it. For the Stoics that’s a fate worse than death. To live in bondage to fear is no life at all. Accepting the fact of our own mortality and overcoming our fear of death is, according to the philosopher Seneca, the secret not only of mental resilience but also personal freedom. As he put it, to learn how to die is to unlearn how to be a slave.

Memento Mori

During a pandemic, in other words, you may have to confront the risk, the possibility, of your own death. Since the day you were born, that’s always been on the cards, though. Most of us find it easier to bury our heads in the sand. Avoidance is the #1 most popular coping strategy in the world. We live in denial of the most obvious fact about human nature: we all die eventually. The Stoics believed that when we’re really confronted with our own mortality, and grasp its implications, that can change our perspective on life quite dramatically. Any one of us could die at any moment and even if we make it through another day, life doesn’t go on forever. The emperor liked to muse that even celebrated physicians, such as Galen, who have saved the lives of many others, all die eventually themselves.

We’re told this was what Marcus was thinking about on his deathbed. As he lay dying, according to one historian, his circle of friends were distraught. Marcus, though, calmly asked why they were weeping for him when, in fact, they should accept both sickness and death as inevitable, part of nature and the common lot of mankind. He returns to this theme many times throughout The Meditations. “All that comes to pass”, he tells himself, even illness and death, should be as “familiar as the rose in spring and the fruit in autumn.”

The Meaning of Death

Even Alexander the Great, says Marcus, and his mule-driver, were both brought to the same level by death. That painful realization could lead to moral nihilism. However, for the Stoics, coming to terms with our own mortality is the existential challenge we must face in order to achieve moral wisdom. The meaning of life doesn’t reside in external events but rather in the use we make of them.

The pandemic could strip everything we possess from us, even our own lives. Nevertheless, it’s up to us to decide how we respond to the crisis. Will we behave like the sort of people we criticize or those we admire?

How Stoic Philosophy can Help us be More Resilient

How Stoic Philosophy can Help us be More Resilient

People kept asking me to do a video about Stoic philosophy and living through the pandemic so here it is, everyone. I hope you find this entertaining and helpful. May you all be safe and well, fate permitting.

Al-Kindi’s Device for Dispelling Sorrows

Al-Kindi’s Device for Dispelling Sorrows

I will describe what I hope will be sufficient for you, and may God protect you from all worries. — Al-Kindi

People often ask me whether there’s any relationship between Stoic philosophy and Islam. Islam probably shares some common themes with Stoicism, as do certain strands in Jewish and Christian thought. There may also be subtle indirect influences, which are hard to trace. However, scholars believe that the writings of arab Muslim scholar Al-Kindi may provide the best example of a more direct link between Islam and Stoicism.

The Stoic school was founded in Athens in 301 BC by a Phoenician merchant called Zeno of Citium. It was always associated with Athens. However, from around the 2nd century BC interest in Stoicism began to grip Rome. We’re told of the last famous Stoic of antiquity, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius:

He conducted many negotiations with kings, and ratified peace with all the kings and satraps of Persia when they came to meet him. He was exceedingly beloved by all the eastern provinces, and on many, indeed, he left the imprint of philosophy. While in Egypt he conducted himself like a private citizen and a philosopher at all the stadia, temples, and in fact everywhere. — Historia Augusta

The Roman provinces being referred to here were probably Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Cappadocia. Marcus appears to have visited some of the major cities in these regions while touring the eastern empire around 176 AD.

Indeed, during the five intervening centuries, while the Stoic school flourished, many of its most important teachers actually came from the near east, particularly the area surrounding the cities of Tarsus, in modern-day Turkey, but also Seleucia and Babylon in modern-day Iraq, Sidon and Tyre in Lebanon, and Alexandria in Egypt. We might potentially find traces of Stoic thought, therefore, among later Islamic thinkers who were born or studied philosophy at the centres of learning in these regions.

The Muslim scholar Al-Kindi has been called “The Father of Arab Philosophy”, although he was actually more of a polymath than simply a philosopher. Al-Kindi was born in Kufa in 801 AD, near the city of Baghdad where he later lived and studied. A thousand years before his time, in the 2nd century BC, two important Stoic philosophers, Diogenes of Babylon and his student, Apollodorus of Seleucia, hailed from this region. Another one of Diogenes’ students, Archedemus of Tarsus, reputedly travelled from Athens to Babylon to found a Stoic school there. It wouldn’t be surprising, therefore, to discover traces of Stoic thought in Al-Kindi’s writings. He was a prolific author and famous for helping to preserve Greek thought by introducing it to the arab world. Indeed, although he’s generally more associated with the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, one of his texts does show clear evidence of having been influenced by Stoic philosophy.

The Device for Dispelling Sorrows

The text is a consolatio type letter offering Stoic-sounding philosophical advice on overcoming life’s sorrows. He says that remedy requires diagnosis and so he begins, in typical Socratic fashion, with a definition. “Sorrow” here refers to emotional pain caused by failing to obtain what we desire, or losing what we love. This concept that emotional distress is a consequence of desire seems to be derived from the Stoic definition below, although the two aren’t identical. The early Stoics taught that desire and fear are the primary irrational emotions or passions:

Pleasure and pain supervene on these, pleasure when we achieve what we desired or escape what we were afraid of, pain when we miss achieving what we desired or meet with what we were afraid of. — Stobaeus

We find this basic premise throughout the main surviving works of Stoicism, especially The Discourses of Epictetus.

Indeed, Al-Kindi sounds very much like Epictetus when he proceeds to emphasize that this definition, of desire as the cause of sorrow, should prompt us to ask to what extent it’s possible for someone to free himself from such desires.

For it is not possible for anyone to attain all that he desires or to be safe from losing all things loved. — Al-Kindi

He concludes that loss is inevitable because nothing material is permanent, everything changes, and permanence only exists in the intellectual realm of ideas. Following Plato, Al-Kindi’s solution is therefore to love only the eternal realm of intellectual things, synonymous with the Mind of God, where nothing changes, and loss is therefore inconceivable. Eternal things are, by definition, not transitory.

As for sensory possessions, sensory objects of love and sensory desires, they are available to everyone and attainable by any hand. It is not possible to safeguard against their decay, extinction and change. — Al-Kindi

What brings consolation, in the material realm, becomes a source of sorrow when it inevitably changes and is lost, as nothing lasts forever. All material things perish eventually. When we desire material things we act as though we wish they could be grasped forever. However, this is against their very nature so we are inevitably frustrated. “Thus he who desires transitory things,” Al-Kindi concludes, “and that his acquisitions and loved objects be of them will be unhappy.”

We must learn to transpose our desires from the realm of perishable material things to the eternal realm of the divine, grasped spiritually and intellectually, as Plato would say. We should enjoy, and be grateful for, material things when they are presented to our senses, but not crave them when they’re absent. “We should not regret what we have missed”, in other words, “and should seek among sensory things only what is accessible.”

Like the Stoics, Al-Kindi, compares this inner state to true kingship. This is the noble attitude of a king: “they enjoy everything that is a present object of observation to them with the Žfirmest action, and with the clearest indication of not needing it.” By contrast, the mean-spirited crave with eager anticipation the coming of every material blessing and bid farewell to every departing one with painful sorrow. The small-minded lack gratitude and acceptance, and can neither receive nor let go of good fortune wisely. We should rather “make ourselves, by means of good habit, content with every situation so as to be always happy.”

People, he says, go to great lengths, even enduring painful medical procedures, to look after the health of their bodies. We should therefore be more willing to endure hardship for the sake of our own minds or souls. Our soul is our true nature, he says, the body merely its instrument. In language, again reminiscent of Epictetus, he says that we should train ourselves to master our desires, building habits, beginning with small things and then progressing “from the smallest to the largest issues.”

The first psychological strategy he recommends consists in dividing our sorrows into two categories, depending on whether they originate in our own actions or the actions of others. Again, this is like Stoicism but slightly different. The Stoics typically employed this general strategy of dividing things into two broad categories, for simple decision-making. Most famously, although this is not the only example, the Handbook of Epictetus begins by advising us to distinguish between things that are “up to us” and things that are not.

Al-Kindi goes on to say regarding the forms of suffering caused by our own actions that we should simply stop doing them. Nobody truly desires to suffer and we therefore involve ourselves in the contradiction of desiring something that we don’t really desire when our own actions are the main source of our sorrow. However, if the cause of our suffering has to do with the actions of another we should ask ourselves whether resolving it is up to us or not. If it is up to us then we should resolve it. If it is something that is up to another person then, at the very least, we should not allow ourselves to be sad in anticipation, before the event happens, because the other person may still resolve what is upsetting us. Moreover, we should remember that time heals all wounds: “Every sorrow is necessarily dispelled by solace in some period of time if the sorrowful one does not die from the sorrow or at the beginning of the sorrow.”

We must remember that wallowing in misery is unnatural and wrong. The wise take measures where possible to remedy their unhappiness.

And we should not accept being miserable when we are able to be happy. One of the good devices for this is to remember the things that saddened us, which we have long forgotten, and the things that saddened others, whose sorrows and their solace from them we have witnessed, and to compare what saddens us with what saddened us in the past, and the things that sadden which we have witnessed, and the manner in which they ended with solace. — Al-Kindi

In order to console ourselves, as Al-Kindi puts it, we should look upon the suffering of others and remind ourselves that it the problems that afflict us are among the common lot of mankind. He illustrates this point with a story about Alexander the Great asking his mother, Olympias, to commemorate his death by inviting only those who have not been afflicted by disaster to attend a feast. When the day came, not a single person arrived, and so she exclaimed:

Oh Alexander! How much your end looks like your beginning! You desired to console me for the disaster of losing you with the perfect condolence, since I am not the Žfirst to suffer disasters and I am not singled out by them from any other human being. — Al-Kindi

Everything we have ever lost, Al-Kindi says, has been lost in the past by many other people. All of them, basically, if they survived, found a way to move on. Even events that seem catastrophic, such as the loss of a child, have been endured by millions of people in the past.

Al-Kindi repeatedly stresses that such sorrow comes from convention rather than nature and as such it could be felt otherwise. The wealthy experience it as catastrophic when they lose their fortune but millions of people have lived in far greater poverty with contentment, never having known anything else.

To desire that misfortune never happens would require desiring that things never change. However, existence requires cycles of generation and decay, the universe is change, so to desire an end to this would be to desire non-existence. If we want to experience life we have to be willing to recognize that change is natural, in other words, and accept the possibility of external misfortune.

The notion that all material things, including our own lives, should be viewed loans, from God or Nature, rather than true possessions, is a recurring theme in Stoicism. We find the same idea expressed here in relation to Islam.

We also should bear in mind that all that we have of common possessions is a borrowing from a lender, the Creator of the possessions, great be His praise, Who may reclaim His loan whenever He wishes and give it to anyone He wishes. — Al-Kindi

If we view things as our possessions, Al-Kindi says, we are bound to feel as though when God “takes it from us by the hands of the enemies that He is harming us”. However, to resent the return of that which has been loaned is petty and indeed, he says, contrary to the virtue of justice. He even says that resenting the fact that our possessions have been siezed by enemies is “silly and childish” because they are as though “messengers” of God, the lender, and it makes no difference when or by whom a loan is recalled. We should rather be grateful for having received it in the first place. The lender reclaims externals, which Al-Kindi calls the sort of things other people share with us. We should therefore also be grateful that he leaves us with that which is most important and valuable in life, our own intellect.

Al-Kindi says that fools entangle themselves in an “outrageous contradiction” because they hate the suffering that comes from the loss of material things, from which it follows that they should seek not to possess them. Yet they also feel sorrow about never having possessed the same things. So their desire to avoid the pain of loss, combined with their hatred of never possessing material things, condemns them to suffering forever.

It is related about the Athenian Socrates that it was said to him: ‘Why is it that you are not sorrowful?’ He responded: ‘Because I do not possess anything for the loss of which I will be sorrowful.’ — Al-Kindi

Al-Kindi contrasts this with a story about the Emperor Nero and his mentor the Stoic philosopher Seneca. It was said that someone gave Nero the exquisite present of a “uniquely crafted, precious, crystal dome”, in the presence of Seneca. Nero was delighted by the object and by how impressed those around him were with its beauty. So he turned to Seneca and asked him what he had to say about it. Seneca replied “I say that it reveals poverty in you and indicates a great disaster will befall you.” Nero, puzzled by this, asked him what he meant. Seneca explained that if Nero were to lose the precious gift then it would be hopeless for him ever to replace it, which highlights his poverty in that regard. He added, moreover, that if it became damaged or Nero lost it he would inevitably experience that as a great disaster.

We’re told that events unfolded precisely as the Stoic had predicted. When Spring came, Nero went to picnic on some nearby islands and ordered that the dome should be brought along with the rest of his baggage. The boat on which it was being carried sank, though, and the dome was lost forever. Everyone around Nero then reacted as though a great catastrophe had befallen him, just as Seneca knew they would. Nero was desperate to replace it but died before he could ever find another one.

“Accordingly”, Al-Kindi adds, “we say: He who desires that his disasters be reduced has to reduce his possessions of the things that are out of his hands”, i.e., he has to be willing to let go of external things. Presumably speaking of a pithos, a huge ceramic storage container of the kind that Diogenes the Cynic reputedly slept in, he writes:

It has further been said about the wise Socrates that one day he was staying in a broken jar in the camp where they were. An artist was present when Socrates said among other things: ‘We ought not to own so as not to be sorrowful.’ The artist then asked him what if the jar he was sitting in breaks? Socrates replied: ‘If the jar breaks, the place will not.’ What the philosopher said is true, because for everything lost there is a replacement. — Al-Kindi

Al-Kindi says that one who is preoccupied with increasing his external possessions, “will not gain eternal life; his temporal life will be disturbed, his illnesses will increase, and his pains will not cease.”

The Allegory of the Boat

In this ephemeral world, situations are changeable, images are deceiving, and its ends disprove its beginnings — one who trusts is disappointed, and we should feel sorry for those who are dazzled by it. Al-Kindi now elaborates at great length on an allegory that appears to derive from the Stoic Epictetus, who wrote:

As on a voyage when the vessel has reached a port, if you go out to get water, it is an amusement by the way to pick up a shell fish or some bulb, but your thoughts ought to be directed to the ship, and you ought to be constantly watching if the captain should call, and then you must throw away all those things, that you may not be bound and pitched into the ship like sheep: so in life also, if there be given to you instead of a little bulb and a shell a wife and child, there will be nothing to prevent (you from taking them). But if the captain should call, run to the ship, and leave all those things without regard to them. But if you are old, do not even go far from the ship, lest when you are called you make default. — Epictetus, Encheiridion

Al-Kindi says that we resemble those who have boarded a boat heading for their homeland but have disembarked somewhere for a temporary stop. Some return to the boat when ready, without delay, and thus they get to claim the best seats for the remainder of the journey. These are the first type of person.

Others, a second type of person, lingered to survey the beautiful scenery, enjoying pleasant meadows, the scent of flowers, and the sight of trees laden with fruits, while listening to the glorious birdsong. They looked over pretty stones on the land, with bright colours and attractive patterns, and pretty shells with unfamiliar shapes. They could see all of this without straying very far. When they returned to the boat, though, others had already taken the best seats.

A third type of person, busied themselves gathering up the pretty stones and shells and picking the fruit from the nearby trees, and the flowers. They didn’t stray far either but when it was time to leave they returned burdened by the load they had gathered. They were like slaves or servants of the stones and shells, deceived by their beauty, and weighed down by them. The fruits and flowers too would spoil before long. Again, they found that others had taken the best seats on the boat already, and they were left with the cramped and uncomfortable corners of the boat. Moreover, their burden of stones, shells, flowers, and fruits, became a nuisance to them on the remainder of the journey, preventing them from being comfortable. Worse, they were forced to spend the rest of the voyage guarding their new possessions and protecting them from being damaged. Most of their leisure time was now spent worrying about these things, not being able to leave them alone — they found their souls clinging to them. In addition, these possessions caused them much sadness whenever they lost them or they became damaged.

Then come the fourth type of person. They left the boat and went far away into the meadows and thickets. They were too busy picking up pretty stones, shells, and flowers. They wandered deep into the bushes, distracted by their desire to get the best fruits from the trees. They forgot about the boat, the journey they were meant to be making to their homeland, and the sorrow that would result from their own actions. They exposed themselves to successive fears, in fact, fleeing predatory beasts, crawling snakes, terrifying noises, and scratching their faces and the rest of their bodies against hanging branches and cutting their feet on thorns. They became stuck in mud, and spoiled their clothes, struggling for a long time to make their way through the woods.

When the captain called for them to return, as the boat was ready to put to sea, some of them stumbled back onboard laden with their new possessions, as we’ve mentioned. They were the last to find seats, so ended up in the most uncomfortable quarters, and suffered considerably during the voyage, becoming more vulnerable to sickness as a result. However, others who had strayed into the thickets didn’t even hear the captain’s call. The boat sailed without them, leaving them behind on island, deserted and alone in a dangerous foreign land instead of taking them home. Some were preyed upon by wild beasts, some became ensnared by trifling pleasures, some became stuck in quicksand, others were bitten by the snakes. They died there, abandoned rotting cadavers, their limbs torn apart horribly.

Those who made it to the ship with the things they’d scavenged from the island had been deceived into thinking they were worth the trouble. They ended up throwing them into the sea because the flowers soon wilted, the fruits rotted, the shining colours of the stones faded when the seawater dried from their surfaces, and the pretty seashells crumbled and began to smell putrid. These things became a nuisance during the journey and they ended up discarding them and returning empty-handed despite the trouble they took over them. Some became sick during the journey because of their discomfort and because their belongings turned bad. They died before reaching their homeland. However, those who didn’t linger too long on the island returned quickly, found comfortable seats for the journey, and arrived at their destination in good health.

Marcus Aurelius appears to have in mind the same allegory, perhaps from having read Epictetus, when he says:

You climbed aboard, you set sail, and now you have come to port. So step ashore! If to another life, there will be no want of gods even in that other world; but if to insensibility, you will no longer be exposed to pain and pleasure, or be the servant of an earthen vessel as inferior in value as that serving it is superior, the servant being mind and guardian-spirit and the master mud and gore. — Meditations, 3.3

Al-Kindi likewise makes it clear that this story is meant to provide an allegory for “our passing from this world to the ‘world of truth’ and an example of the conditions of all who pass through this world.”

Conclusion

Al-Kindi also concludes by saying some very Stoic-sounding things. We should learn the true nature of evil, that it resides in our own moral errors, and thereby transpose our aversion from external things onto the vicius dispositions of our own soul.

We should bear in mind that we should not hate what is not bad; rather we ought to hate the thing that is bad. If this is Ž fixed in our mind, our capability is increased thereby to dispel sensory sorrows. We think that there is nothing worse than death, though death is not bad; fearing death is bad. As for death, it is the completion of our nature; for if there were no death there would be no human beings existing at all. — Al-Kindi

The saying that death is not bad, but rather our fear of death is bad, is classic Stoicism. This is true more generally: our own passions, such as fear and anger, do us more harm than the things of which we’re afraid or about which we’re angry. The notion that death is natural, and should therefore be viewed with relative indifference, is a recurring theme in Stoicism, particularly in The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

So, oh laudable brother, keep these pieces of advice as a permanent model for yourself and you will be saved from the injuries of sorrow and through them will arrive at the best home, the abode of permanence and the dwelling place of the righteous. — Al-Kindi