How would you introduce yourself and your work to our readers?
I’m an academic who writes about Stoicism and the later reception of Stoicism. My first book The Art of Living (2003) was about the way in which the Stoics saw philosophy as something expressed in one’s way of life. My second book Stoicism (2006) was a general introduction to Stoicism, aimed at university students rather than general readers. My most recent book Hellenistic Philosophy (2018) is an overview of philosophy in that period; an academic introduction, but hopefully accessible to general readers, that also stresses the practical dimension in much of Hellenistic philosophy.
How did you become interested in Stoicism?
It was while I was an undergraduate student of philosophy. I was reading a wide variety of things and references to Stoicism kept cropping up. It soon started to feel like the secret thread connecting all my disparate interests. Independently I was also reading Marcus Aurelius around this time, not necessarily thinking of him as a Stoic. He was certainly the first Stoic author I read.
What’s the most valuable thing we can learn about Stoicism from the life or writings of Marcus Aurelius?
I think there are a couple of things. First is the resolutely practical attitude. He’s not talking about philosophy, or even about how one might put philosophy into practice in his own life; he’s directly confronting difficulties in his own life. His response draws on Stoic philosophy, which is sometimes only implicit, but it’s not a book explicitly outlining philosophical ideas; instead it’s a model of how one might go about shaping one’s life in the light of philosophy. I think this is one of the reasons why Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus complement each other so well: Epictetus gives you the philosophical ideas, while Marcus gives you a practical example of how someone might try to act on them.
The second thing is his intellectual modesty. He doesn’t claim to have all the answers. He suspends judgement on some issues where he is not sure. There’s no dogmatic ‘this is what a proper Stoic would do’ rhetoric. There’s no claim to be a sage. Instead he’s just a flawed human being trying to work out how to become better. It’s also worth noting that he doesn’t seem to be primarily motivated by overcoming his own distress, becoming happier, or any of those things: the focus is primarily on being a good, ethical human being, doing the right thing, behaving decently to those around him, and so on. The project isn’t self-centred self-help; it’s ethical self-improvement.
Do you have a favourite quote from The Meditations?
It’s hard to choose, but I think it must be this (2.17): “Of man’s life, his time is a point, his substance flowing, his perception faint, the constitution of his whole body decaying, his soul a spinning wheel, his fortune hard to predict, and his fame doubtful; that is to say, all the things of the body are a river, the things of the soul dream and delusion, life is a war and a journey in a foreign land, and afterwards oblivion.” It’s pretty blunt stuff and when I first read it, many years ago now, it felt like a slap across the face! We are all merely momentary accumulations of matter, soon to be dispersed and forgotten.
What advice would you give someone who wanted to learn more about Marcus Aurelius or Stoicism?
If you’ve already read Marcus, then I’d say read Epictetus, for the reason I gave earlier. If you want an account of how the two fit together, then Pierre Hadot’s book The Inner Citadel makes the case for Marcus’s debt to Epictetus. I’ve tended to resist biographies of Marcus because inevitably they tend to focus on his career as Emperor. If you are more interested in learning how to put Stoicism into practice then you should try Stoic Week (of course!) and look at some of the many popular books on Stoicism. Of these I’d probably recommend A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine and Stoicism and the Art of Happiness by some guy called Donald Robertson!
Do you have anything else that you wanted to mention while we have the chance?
There are lots of things coming up. At the moment I’m in the final stages of organizing Stoicon 2018, which will take place in London on 29th September.
I’ve just been asked to write a short book on Roman Stoicism for a general audience, which I hope to do this summer, and should be out next year. I also have a long-standing contract to write a book on Marcus Aurelius, which I hope to complete this coming year, the aim of which will be to make explicit all the philosophical ideas that lurk beneath the surface in the Meditations.
How would you introduce yourself and your work to our readers?
I’m a husband, father, teacher, and musician from Floyd, VA USA.
My lifelong study and affection for Stoic philosophy benefits my life, relationships, and work including my book, The Stoic Creative Handbook, my coaching practice, my membership site, my podcast, and my work as a coach in Seth Godin’s The Marketing Seminar. You can learn more about me and all these projects at BeCreativeOnPurpose.com.
How did you become interested in Stoicism?
My adventures in Stoicism began in a 7th grade Latin class where I was introduced to Marcus through translating passages from Meditations from Latin to English from my textbook (although Marcus originally wrote them in Greek). Encouraging my interest, my teacher gave me his copy of Meditations. I read and reread it until the book was tattered.
At the time, I didn’t know I was reading a definitive ancient Stoic text. I just loved the way Marcus spoke to himself. It was the same way I talked to myself. This is one thing purposeful work can do, it connects people disconnected by time and place.
What’s the most valuable thing we can learn about Stoicism from the life or writings of Marcus Aurelius?
This has changed over time. As a teenager, I was most affected by Marcus’ reminders to curb unhealthy desires and impulses. As a young adult, Marcus’ urging to apply oneself intentionally and generously to meaningful work became more important. As I enter middle age, it is the call to approach mortality with grace and to serve others while I still can that most resonate.
Do you have a favourite quote from The Meditations?
I have dozens of favorite quotes from Meditations, but the one I cite most frequently is, “Love the humble art you have learned and take rest in it.” – Meditations, 4.31
It is the art of living that I believe we are here to learn. Crafting our excellence through meaningful endeavors that serve others and a greater good is not the work we have to do, but the work we get to do. For this gift, we should be grateful and approach it with humility and purpose. This quote by Marcus above helps me keep this top of mind.
What advice would you give someone who wanted to learn more about Marcus Aurelius or Stoicism?
Although there are many great modern works about Stoicism, I find the primary ancient texts of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca are easy to access and understand. Why not begin with those?
What do you think is the most important psychological technique or piece of practical advice that we can derive from Marcus’ Stoicism?
Again, for me, this has changed as I’ve aged. As a young man premeditatio malorum, Hierocles Concentric Circles of Influence, journaling gratitudes and lessons, and other Stoic exercises helped me immensely. As a middle-aged person, memento mori has served as a call to action to focus on the here and now and do everything I can to enhance the lives of others while I still can. I reflect on my mortality and am inspired to do work that matters during my daily cemetery run.
Recently, I’ve meditated on this advice from Marcus, “People exist for one another. You can instruct or endure them.” – Meditations, 8.59 This has lead me to begin a new project called Wicked Conversations. Wicked Conversations challenge our beliefs and assumptions, but instead of spiraling into arguments, Wicked Conversations help us set aside agendas and cultivate understanding and the pursuit of deeper truths.
Do you have anything else that you wanted to mention while we have the chance?
The lessons of Stoicism are as pertinent today as they were in ancient times. Through the millennia, we’ve asked the questions “What does it mean to be human?” “What does it mean to be happy?” and “How can I be more of both?” Stoicism encourages us to answer these questions not just with ideas, but with action. In this way, we are afforded the opportunity to improve ourselves and enhance the lives of others.
All of my work at BeCreativeOnPurpose.com is informed by my longtime interest and study of Stoicism in general and Marcus Aurelius in particular. I’d love to have you join my newsletter and stay in touch there!
The digital age has added innumerable new Stoic resources, some more worthy than others. I advise starting with a thorough and thoughtful reading of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and applying this wisdom to your daily life, work, and relationships.
That said, here is a document where I share links to some of my favorite Stoic-related books, blogs, sites, videos, and apps. I’m always happy to connect via email with fellow Stoic travelers. You can reach me at scott@becreativeonpurpose.com.
For more information check out Scott’s Creative on Purpose website and podcast, which has featured interviews with me and other members of the Modern Stoicism team.
His book The Stoic Creative Handbook is available from Amazon. Look out for his upcoming Stoicism Today article on Stoicism & Creativity publishing, due to be published in August 2018.
Karen Duffy, or “Duff”, was kind enough to send me a review copy of her new book Backbone: Living With Chronic Pain Without Turning Into One (2017) because it contains a chapter on Stoicism. It’s a book about developing a backbone, and a sense of humour, and not allowing chronic pain or illness to get you down.
I wish I could write like Duff. Her style is witty banter and yet there’s a profound message of hope in there as well as the wisdom of experience. I postponed reading Backbone for about eight months because I was “too busy”. When I finally got round to it, I read it in a single evening and thoroughly enjoyed it. (I’ve already sneaked the PDF to some of my friends!) Duff has an autoimmune disorder called sarcoidosis of the central nervous system. It’s not very nice. She’s had to learn to cope with a lot of health issues, as well as severe chronic pain. She talks about how it was as though “old age” hit her in her early thirties in the form of chronic illness. She’s tough, though, and full of gratitude for life. Duff’s pretty into Stoicism already, and maybe I’m biased, but I reckon she could be even more Stoic than she realizes.
Her basic attitude that “happiness is a byproduct of being useful”, that it comes from what we give rather than what we get, is pure Stoicism. It’s our own actions that lead to personal fulfilment not just the chance events that happen to befall us in life. She’s of the “you make your own luck” school of thought, which is totally derived from Stoicism as well. “What is bad fortune? Opinion.” (Epictetus, Discourses, 3.3). Duff says that it seems to her that things turn out for the best when we try to make the best of our situation. Epictetus calls this philosophy of life the magic wand of Hermes. According to legend, it has the power to turn anything it touches into gold. What he means is that if we have the right attitude we can flourish even in adversity, by showing our resilience, and turning bad fortune into good. “I believe”, says Duff, “that when we face obstacles and adversity in our lives we have an opportunity to strengthen our courage.” She’s clearly talking from experience so I think we should listen…
One of the many unexpected things I learned from this book is that hockey may be the most Stoic game. Apparently there’s an “embellishment penalty” for players who take a dive and fake injuries on the ice. If there’s one thing the Stoics like to tell us it’s that we only make things worse by complaining too much about our suffering. It just adds another layer to our misery. As Paul Dubois, a famous Stoic-influenced psychotherapist everyone’s now forgotten about, liked to say: “He who knows how to suffer suffers less.” (Obscure therapy reference #1.) That could pretty much be Duff’s slogan as well. She describes her illness as, in some ways, a gift. Not a gift she’d have picked out for herself but she’s found an upside in discovering her own backbone, or inner resilience. Her advice that pain is inevitable but suffering is optional is (you guessed it) also pure Stoic.
When I read Duff’s remark “I believe that we are never too sick or too old to set another goal”, for some reason it reminded me of one of my favourite passages from ancient philosophy, found at the very start of Plato’s Republic. It’s a conversation between Socrates and a venerable old man, a wealthy immigrant living in Athens, called Cephalus. I first read it as a teenager and it just stuck in my mind. Socrates says that as life is a journey, he thinks it’s only sensible to ask those who have gone before us what the territory ahead is like: is it rough or smooth going? Cephalus gives him a surprising answer. First he explains that just as birds of a feather flock together so, he finds, old men like each other’s company. He hears all his friends complaining about old age, and their various aches and pains on a regular basis, and if you listened to them you’d think it’s a terrible curse. But Cephalus says they’re all wrong.
He says that what matters is your attitude and that if you’re the sort of person who complains about old age then he reckons you probably complained almost as much in your youth when the going was easier anyway. He looks on the positive side of things. As he gets older he’s lost his sex drive but that’s okay because it’s one less thing to worry about. He quotes Sophocles’ saying that it’s like being unshackled from a madman. In fact, Cephalus says that as he’s grown older he feels like he’s been gradually unshackled from several madmen. He looks at young people and feels that they spend a lot of time and energy chasing after things that just don’t matter to him anymore and worrying about superficial concerns that one day they’ll forget about. He can’t travel much anymore because he’s frail but he finds that he obtains more pleasure from conversation than he ever did in the past.
This is all prelude to the Stoics. Epictetus said “It’s not things that upset us but our judgements about them” and not a lot of people know this but he immediately follows it by saying that death can’t be terrible because if it were everyone would be scared of it whereas Socrates viewed it with noble indifference. Epictetus probably learned this strategy from reading about Socrates. Does something upset you? (Yes!) Does everyone else feel upset about it or do some people view it differently and cope better? (I guess so.) Well, in that case, could it be that it’s not the thing itself that’s upsetting but your way of looking at it?
In the conversation in the Republic the roles are reversed for some reason and it’s Socrates who’s learning this from Cephalus. What’s nice about this discussion is that he’s not entirely convinced, though. You see Cephalus owned a huge factory producing weapons and armour and so he was a wealthy businessman. Come now, says Socrates, surely people will think that’s easy for you to say because you’ve got loads of cash. Cephalus is very relaxed. He replies with a story. The Athenian general Themistocles, who had accomplished great things and won tremendous acclaim, once met a rude man from the relatively small and undistinguished Greek Island of Seriphos, who wanted to take him down a peg or two. The Seraphean remarked rather cynically that Themistocles was only famous because he had the good fortune to be born in Athens (the big smoke) and so he had a head start in life. “True,” replied Themistocles, “but if I had been born in Seriphos and you in Athens, neither of us would have achieved anything.” Touche! Cephalus brought up this anecdote to make the analogous point that wealth, though an advantage, only goes so far in making life more comfortable. At the end of the day, you need the right attitude as well. He’s already implied the same thing earlier when talking about the advantages of youth and good health. Someone with a negative attitude often won’t be happy even with all the advantages money, youth, and health bring. Cephalus admits that poverty, old age, and sickness are obviously disadvantages. However, even when faced with these challenges, a truly wise man, with the right attitude toward life, can perhaps flourish in his own way and find a degree of happiness. As I was reading Backbone, it occured to me that Duff might like that story too. (So that’s my feeble excuse for a massive digression!)
Anyway, how did she actually get into Stoicism in the first place? Well, one of her friends pointed out a bust of Marcus Aurelius to her in the garden of Sylvester Manor, an 18th century house on Shelter Island, in New York. Not to be outdone, Duff decided she better find out who this guy was and brushed up on her knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome, including Stoic philosophy. Now she carries a copy of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius in her purse and reads from it every day. As she puts it, it was actually her competitiveness and a kind of intellectual envy that inspired her to get into Stoicism. As she learned more about Stoicism, though, she realized that, ironically, it’s a philosophy that teaches us to value improvements in our own character (virtue) and indifference toward these sort of comparisons with other people (externals). She plunged into Stoicism in any case because it was obviously very relevant to the challenges she was facing in life.
She went from reading Marcus to Epictetus whose endurance of chronic pain and disability she admired. Epictetus was lame and according to one account this was because, as a slave, his master cruelly snapped his leg. It’s surprising how many people find Epictetus relatable because of his gammy leg – it may explain why he comes over a bit cranky sometimes. Duff took from him the doctrine that none of us are free unless we master ourselves. She’d already taken up the challenge of mastering herself, particularly how she coped with pain and illness. Stoicism added some validation perhaps and she says it gave her a way to rise above the suffering of her body while focusing instead on the care of her soul.
Duff says she was very receptive to the core idea of Stoic philosophy, which she correctly sees as being that happiness, or fulfilment, comes largely from within, from our own way of thinking. Epictetus actually attributes this maxim to none other than Zeus himself: “If you want any good, get it from yourself.” Duff rightly views Stoicism as a practical philosophy emphasizing discipline and duty, something which complements her own values. She says, “The Stoics inspired me to meet the everyday challenges of my life and showed me how to deal with inevitable losses, disappointments, and grief… I find Stoicism a great resource that fills me with resilience and vigour.” Chronic pain can become a teacher and she learned that trying to control her pain, when she couldn’t, sometimes just backfired by making it more intense. A certain type of acceptance can be a pathway to emotional resilience in coping with chronic pain and illness, as the Stoics taught. She therefore follows Marcus Aurelius’ advice to reject any sense of injury to herself, despite the physical limitations imposed by her illness. There are a whole repertoire of pain management techniques tucked away in Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, from special ways of accepting the sensation to learning to forego unnecessary complaining, which the Stoics believed often only made things worse. One of the most fundamental things Stoicism teaches, though, is a particular way of looking at pain as being neither good nor bad but “indifferent”, which can help us accept that it’s there and get on with our lives. When we’re able to stop hating our pain and struggling with it internally, we often suffer less, which is a kind of paradox really.
Today we talk about grasping a nettle – if you do it confidently, without hesitating, you’re less likely to get stung. The Cynic philosophers, who were the forerunners of the Stoics, had a whole barrage of similar metaphors for accepting pain and hardship. They talk about our pain being like a pack of wild dogs threatening us. If we panic and try to run they’ll just chase us down and we’ll literally end up a dog’s breakfast – that’s just what they’re waiting for us to do. The wise man turns to face them, looking at them calmly and confidently, which hopefully causes them to back away. (At least according to the Cynics!) They also compare it to grabbing a snake. The nervous person who tries to pick it up by the tip of its tail or the middle will get himself bitten. An ancient snake handler would go straight for the scary end, grabbing it confidently behind its head to avoid being bitten. Their point is that if we voluntarily face our pain, and accept it, we’ll often suffer less than if we try to struggle or avoid it. Someone who tries to stamp out a fire gingerly is more likely to get burned, they say, than someone who just tramples on it confidently. And then they’ve got another one about a timid boxer who backs away and ends up getting more of a beating than if he’d moved toward his opponent, and had the confidence to fight more aggressively. Therapists today often say that coping with pain is like standing up to a bully. We have to stop running away and trying to hide from him, although that might seem scary at first. We might get hurt, it might be painful at first, but in the long-run we’ll often suffer less by standing our ground and facing what’s threatening us, actively accepting the reality of things like pain and illness. That seems to be what Duff is saying in Backbone as well.
She also says that her appreciation of Stoicism led her to develop a “pantheon of heroes”, individuals whose resilience in the face of adversity she’s inspired by and who have become her role models in life. She says they’re carved into her own personal Mount Rushmore. They include Peg Leg Bates, a one-legged tap dancer from the 1920s. Studying role-models who exemplify strength of character and resilience is a major technique in (wait for it) Stoic philosophy as well.
She emphasizes the importance of friendship which is not only good psychology, for building resilience, but it’s also a major theme in Greek philosophy. Socrates loved nothing more than bragging about his skill as a matchmaker of friends and he was adept at reconciling friends and family members who’d fallen out after a quarrel. He said some really cool things about friendship. The son of one of his wealthy companions was worried about making friends and he knew that Socrates had loads of friends from all walks of life so I think he was sneakily trying to get himself introduced to some of them. Socrates, in his usual style, gets a dialogue going about what qualities we should look for in our ideal friends. Seems pretty banal at first. But in typical Socrates-style he’s got a hidden agenda, and he plans to turn the whole conversation on its head. He explains that he’d be delighted to introduce the lad to all the best people in Athens and he knows the secret – he’ll just heap praise on him in their presence. There’s a catch, though, Socrates wants him to promise he’ll actually do all the things he’s just described the ideal friend doing because then he won’t be lying when praising him as someone who would make a great friend. That makes the boy hesitate. Socrates says there are only two parts to this process. Introducing him around Athens is the easy part and anyone should be delighted to do that once they see he’s such a great guy. That’s the only part the boy’s worried about but he needn’t be. The real problem is actually making himself a good friend to begin with, the sort anyone would want to have, and he admits that’s something he’s not really thought about enough. So he goes off to work on himself a bit more. Like most people facing most problems, he’d kind of got the whole thing back to front. Socrates is also trying to get him to realize that his goal shouldn’t just be appearing like a good friend but actually being one.
Duff quotes Aristotle’s saying “A friend is a second self”, literally an alter ego. (Alter ego est amicus.) That saying was also attributed to Zeno, the founder of Stoicism – maybe something the Stoics and Aristotle agreed on. Many of the other quotes and sayings are consistent with Stoicism even if that’s not where they came from. Duff quotes C.S. Lewis saying “Don’t let your happiness depend on something you may lose.” That’s Stoicism central. Epictetus said we should avoid becoming overly-attached to external things and let nothing cleave to us or grow on us that might cause us emotional pain when it is torn away (Discourses, 4.1). That doesn’t mean that Stoics don’t love just that they’re prepared in advance to endure the losses inevitable in life. Duff also talks about how people say things like “I’m not good at this. I’m so upset about your illness, I can’t handle it.” That jumped out at me incidentally because there’s a Discourse of Epictetus where he grills some poor guy who’s been talking just like that about his sick daughter. Epictetus shows him how absurd this is. I’ve been wondering how many people actually say things like that but it sounds like Duff’s met a few so they do exist.
As you can tell, Duff’s a connoisseur of fine quotes. I’ve never heard this one from Mark Twain: “The fear of death follows the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” That really resonated with me, though. Duff’s learned not to be cowed by suffering and her book reminded me of Vespasian’s saying that an emperor should die standing, i.e., never give in. (“Die with your boots on”, I think, is the American version.) She’s also a bit of an etymology geek, noting that the word “disaster” comes from Greek, via Latin, and originally meant “bad star”, or as Shakespeare would say “ill-starred”. It’s a stroke of bad luck. Well I’ll see her “disaster” and raise her one “tragedy”, which comes from the Greek meaning “goat song”. We’re not sure if it was originally a song about a goat with a particularly tragic life or if the highly-contested prize for the most tragic song at Greek festivals was originally a splendid goat. Anyway, when wallowing in tragedy, I find it helps to remember this fact because it’s puzzling enough to serve as a convenient distraction.
Duff says that what matters isn’t that you live, or survive another day, but rather it’s how you live. The Stoics would say that the goal isn’t just to live but to live well, i.e., wisely. I think her book will probably help a lot of people who are suffering to live through it a bit more wisely. Her voice really comes through loud and clear. It’s easy to write books that everyone sort of likes because they’re bland and inoffensive. This book’s a lot more in your face, and that’s a good thing. It reminded me a little bit of Andrew Salter, the guy who invented assertiveness training. (Obscure therapy reference #2.) Duff concludes the whole thing by saying: “I have a serious illness, but I don’t have to take it seriously. I have found an upside in having my life turned upside down. I have learned acceptance and resilience and have created a whole new life. In short, I grew a backbone.”
Phocion the Good was an Athenian statesman and general who was born a few years before Socrates was executed. He was executed at Athens himself around 318 BC, perhaps shortly after the arrival there of Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism. Plutarch wrote a chapter on him in Parallel Lives, citing him as a Greek counterpart to the famous Roman Stoic hero Cato of Utica. Plutarch mentions Zeno of Citium in relation to the laconic style of speaking that Phocion shared with Cato:
For, as Zeno used to say that a philosopher should immerse his words in meaning before he utters them, so Phocion’s language had most meaning in fewest words.
He also says that Phocion was a “pupil of Plato when he was still a stripling, and later a pupil of Xenocrates, in the Academy” and he therefore “cultivated the noblest behaviour from the very beginning”. We’re also told that Phocion had been a follower of Diogenes the Cynic, in the Lives and Opinions of Diogenes Laertius.
In a fragment from a lecture by Musonius Rufus “on whether a philosopher will file a suit against someone for assault”
Socrates obviously refused to be upset when he was publicly ridiculed by Aristophanes; indeed, when Socrates met Aristophanes, he asked if Aristophanes would like to make other such use of him. It is unlikely that this man would have become angry if he had been the target of some minor slight, since he was not upset when he was ridiculed in the theater! Phocion the Good, when his wife was insulted by someone, didn’t even consider bringing charges against the insulter. In fact, when that person came to him in fear and asked Phocion to forgive him, saying that he did not know that it was his wife whom he offended, Phocion replied: “My wife has suffered nothing because of you, but perhaps some other woman has. So you don’t need to apologize to me.”
Marcus Aurelius may have heard this story because he also mentions Phocion in relation to enduring the contempt of others.
Will someone feel contempt for me? Let him look to that. But I for my part will look to this, that I may not be discovered doing or saying anything that is worthy of contempt. Will someone hate me? Let him look to that. But I will be kind and good-natured to everyone, and ready to show this particular person the nature of his error, not in a critical spirit, nor as if I were making a display of my tolerance, but sincerely and kindheartedly, like the great Phocion (if he really meant what he said). For that is how one should be within one’s heart, to show oneself to the gods as one who is neither disposed to be angry at anything nor to make any complaint. For what harm can come to you if you are presently doing what is appropriate to your nature, and you welcome what is presently appropriate for universal nature, as someone who is supremely anxious that by one means or another the common benefit should be brought to fruition? (Meditations, 11.13)
People sometimes ask what books on Stoicism to read next after they’ve read the “Big Three”: Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.
Of course, opinions are going to vary about this. There are lots of things we could suggest reading. Setting aside modern books on the subject, though, these are the first six I normally recommend…
Diogenes Laertius’ Lives and Opinions
You don’t need to read the whole book. The long chapter on Zeno contains a summary of early Stoic teachings. However, you may want to read the whole of books six (Cynicism) and seven (Stoicism). This contains second or third hand information summarized from earlier texts in the 3rd century AD by a biographer who wasn’t himself a Stoic or even a philosopher. Nevertheless it remains one of our most important sources for information on the teachings of the early Greek Stoic school.
The Lectures of Musonius Rufus
Musonius was the teacher of Epictetus and reputedly the most important philosopher of his lifetime. He was the mentor of key members of the Stoic Opposition. A collection of his lectures and several fragments still survive today, which are similar in some ways to the teachings of Epictetus. If you like Epictetus, you should certainly read this, although it’s really an essential source for anyone interested in Stoicism.
Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates
Our other major source for information on Socrates, beside Plato. Xenophon paints a simpler and more Stoic picture of Socrates’ philosophy. It was reputedly hearing a reading of Book Two that inspired Zeno to become a philosopher and ultimately to found the Stoic School. That part of the Memorabilia contains Socrates’ version of a famous oration by the Sophist Prodicus, called The Choice of Hercules, which was designed as an exhortation for young men to embrace philosophy as a way of life and places considerable emphasis on self-mastery. Xenophon’s version of Socrates is more concerned with the virtue of self-discipline and it’s easy to see this as an important influence on Stoicism.
Plato’s Apology
We could cite all of the works of Plato as relevant but the dialogue that seems to have most influenced the Stoics is the Apology. The concluding sentence of Epictetus’ Handbook, for example, paraphrases from it. It provides a vivid example of Socrates’ commitment to philosophy and his courage facing execution but there’s also considerable discussion of his attitudes toward death and positive teachings about morality, which coincide very closely with later Stoic teachings. Death is neither good nor evil and it’s important to overcome our fear of dying; wisdom and virtue are the highest goods and we should never value things like wealth more highly than them. Stoic-sounding teachings can be found in many other Platonic dialogues – including the Euthydemus, Gorgias, Meno and Republic – but the Apology is the best place to start looking.
Plutarch’s Life of Cato the Younger
Cato is one of the less well-known Stoics because we don’t have any writings by him today but he was a great hero of the Roman Republic because he defied the tyrant Julius Caesar. Our best account of him comes from Plutarch’s Lives, which is a biography but contains several interesting anecdotes about his character and values, although not much philosophy. If you’re interested in Stoicism, though, you should know about Cato, and also about the Stoic Opposition, which followed later, under the principate.
Cicero’s De Finibus
Cicero was an Academic philosopher but he had studied philosophy at Athens and was exceptionally well-read on the subject and very familiar with the teachings of Stoicism. He’s also quite sympathetic toward the Stoics, though not one himself, so his writings provide one of our most important sources for early and middle Stoicism. Stoicism is mentioned, or is an influence, throughout many of his works, but the most important is undoubtedly De Finibus, which portrays Cato the Younger summarizing early Stoic ethical teachings, which Cicero compares critically with those of the Epicureans and Academics. This is our most systematic account of Stoic ethics, so it’s extremely valuable in providing a context for the more conversational and fragmented version we obtain from Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.
Honourable Mentions
It should go without saying that this is the tip of the iceberg. There are many other ancient texts of relevance to Stoicism. Xenophon’s Symposium and Apology are also very important as are all of the Platonic dialogues and many other writings by non-Stoics such as Cicero and Plutarch. There are many fragments from early Stoic texts available in several compilations. There are also less well-known Stoic texts, which still survive today, like the Greek Theology of Cornutus and the Pharsalia of Lucan. The poems of Horace also contain many Stoic influences. The Roman histories are also extremely valuable, especially in relation to understanding the life of Marcus Aurelius. My goal here isn’t to provide a survey of everything, though, just a quick introduction to the texts I normally advise people to read first, after finishing Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.
There’s a remarkable series of passages in Plato’s Republic, where Socrates is portrayed describing four reasons why wise men don’t allow themselves to indulge in excessive grief when faced with misfortune. We can also view these as four cognitive (thinking) strategies for coping with adversity, and building emotional resilience. These appear to foreshadow Stoic advice for coping with adversity or themes found in the Hellenistic “consolation” (consolatio) literature written by both Stoics and Platonists, most notably including Seneca and Plutarch. (If you want to learn more about Socrates, incidentally, check out my free mini-course on his life and philosophy.)
This first comes up in Book 3 of the Republic, where Socrates argues that the heroes depicted in tragic poetry often provide people with negative role models, insofar as they’re made to give pitiful speeches lamenting their misfortune to excess (387d-388d). He says that a good man doesn’t regard death as a catastrophic thing for someone to suffer, even the death of one of his friends. A wise man, therefore, will not grieve as terribly over the loss of his loved ones as tragic heroes did such as, say, Achilles. The wise and good man is surely someone as self-sufficient as can be, Socrates says, and the least dependent on others of all men. So to lose his son, brother, possessions, or any such thing, would seem less dreadful to the wise and good man than it would to other people. Therefore, concludes Socrates, he will give way to lamentation less and bear misfortune more calmly and quietly than others. He doesn’t, though, say that the wise man would not grieve or lament at all.
The idea that good (or wise) men somehow cope better than others with misfortune is finally picked back up again in Book 10 of the Republic (603e-604d). Socrates now appears to claim, unsurprisingly, that training in philosophy can contribute to emotional resilience. He begins by recalling his earlier assertion that a good man who has the misfortune to lose his son, or anything else dear to him, will bear the loss with greater equanimity than others would. Although such a man cannot help feeling sorrow, he will moderate his sorrow. There is, he says, a “principle of law and reason” in man that bids him resist being overwhelmed by the feeling of misfortune, although grief pulls him in the other direction. (He then proceeds to use this observation in order to provide support for Plato’s tripartite division of the soul, which the Stoics rejected, and which was probably an alien notion to the real Socrates.)
Socrates claims that the intellect of the wise and good man is willing to follow the law of reason, which tells us it is best to be patient in the face of suffering. He adds that reason (or presumably also philosophy) tells us that we should not give way to impatience for the following reasons:
There is no way to be certain whether the events that befall us will turn out to be good or bad for us. (Many of our greatest setbacks in life turn out to be for the best, and they’re often opportunities or blessings in disguise, but what matters most is whether we respond wisely or foolishly to events.)
We gain nothing by taking misfortunes badly, grieving overmuch simply adds another layer to our problem.
No human affairs are of great importance anyway, in the grand scheme of things, so they’re not worth taking seriously enough to get highly upset about them.
Grief actually stands in the way and prevents us from exercising reason, the very thing that would help us most when faced with adversity.
Socrates elaborates upon the last point by saying that the thing most required when facing misfortune is that we take counsel with ourselves and deliberate rationally about the problem, “as we would the fall of the dice”. We should plan the best response under the circumstances, or as psychologists today often say we should employ a rational problem-solving response.
We mustn’t, like children who have taken a fall, he says, keep hold of the part hurt and waste our time wailing. Instead, we should train our minds to apply the psychological remedy as quickly as possible, healing what is sickly, fixing the problem, and banishing our cries of sorrow through the healing art. That’s easily recognizable as a description of what we call today “emotional resilience”, or the ability to rebound after experiencing some misfortune. That is how we should meet the attacks of fortune and not by indulging those irrational emotions, agrees Glaucon, his interlocutor. On the other hand, those who indulge their unruly passions never tire of recalling troubles and lamenting over them, says Socrates, in an irrational, useless, and even cowardly manner. That sounds like a description of what we would call “morbid rumination” in modern psychotherapy.
We might compare these reasons or cognitive strategies to four exercises found in Stoic literature:
Remembering that external things, beyond our direct control, are neither good nor bad in themselves, but rather indifferent with regard to the goal of life.
Contemplating the consequences of responding rationally versus passionately, which I call Stoic “functional analysis”.
Grasping events from a broader and more comprehensive perspective, such as the “View from Above”.
Asking ourselves what “What virtue has nature given me to deal with this?”, bearing in mind that the virtues of courage and moderation, which we praise in others, are designed to limit the emotion of fear and unruly desires, in accord with reason.
The foundation of this argument in Plato’s Republic, though, is undoubtedly the first of these, which amounts to the argument that external things are neither good nor bad in themselves, but should be viewed as indifferent. What matters is whether we make use of them wisely or foolishly. That basic notion crops up several times throughout the Socratic literature and becomes central to Stoic therapy of the passions.
When confronted by the troubling behaviour of others, there were three main strategies or ideas that Socrates employed, which were later assimilated into Stoic philosophy. (If you want to learn more, incidentally, check out my free mini-course on Socrates.)
1. Other people’s behaviour is indifferent
Socrates liked to remind himself and others that external events, including the actions of others, are neither good nor bad in themselves, but only insofar as we respond to them wisely or foolishly. Events that are neither good nor bad are indifferent. For example, he explains to his eldest son Lamprocles that the notorious tongue-lashings they receive from Socrates’ wife Xanthippe are no worse than those delivered by actors on the stage. But one actor is not upset when another yells abuse at him. So the behaviour in itself is indifferent, it’s our interpretation of it that upsets us, and we should remind ourselves of that.
2. Nobody does evil willingly
Socrates famously argued that no man does evil knowingly, which means he cannot do it willingly. Everyone believes what he is doing to be right, he says, in other words he does what he does for the sake of achieving what he considers to be good for himself. Socrates therefore argued that when people act viciously or unjustly it’s because they’re making an error of judgement about the course of action that will lead to their own good. Realizing this we should pity the unjust, if anything, rather than feeling anger toward them. They’re making the same sort of mistakes that children often make before they’ve learned to see beyond the misleading initial impressions we have of certain things.
3. Other people provide us with an opportunity to exercise our own virtue
Once we realize that other people’s actions are neither good nor bad and that injustice is due to ignorance, it becomes apparent that what matters most is whether our own response is good or bad. Challenging situations, where our initial impressions are potentially upsetting, give us an opportunity to exercise wisdom and virtue, and doing so repeatedly strengthens our own character. Socrates was often asked by his friends why he put up with Xanthippe scolding him, throwing cold water over him, and even ripping the shirt from his back in the street. Socrates said that the best trainers choose to work with spirited horses knowing that by doing so they improve their own skills and become more confident dealing with whatever type of horses they may encounter in the future. (Xanthippe’s name means yellow or golden horse in Greek.)
In the same way, Socrates said that putting up with Xanthippe was good training to strengthen his own character. He knew that she was a good wife and mother, fundamentally, it was just that her quick temper sometimes created a negative appearance but he considered that misleading and saw beyond it. Socrates liked to say that as small children we at first fear others wearing scary masks (think Halloween costumes). When we realize that underneath the mask, it’s just other children having fun, the fear is eliminated. He said we should view other events in the same way as adults, treating our initial impressions like bugbear masks. The wise man pauses to remove the mask, examining what’s really behind it rationally, and thus his fears are often eliminated by greater knowledge and understanding of the truth.
Six years ago I wrote an article entitled “God or Atoms” about the question as to whether a modern follower of Stoicism can be an agnostic or an atheist. At the start I emphasized the following:
None of these Stoics appear to have been agnostics themselves but others may have been. What matters is whether they, and other Stoics, would have accepted that someone else could potentially be both an agnostic (or atheist) and a Stoic.
Well, little did I know how much uproar that would cause! Since I published it I’ve been periodically bombarded with comments, emails, and messages online from some surprisingly angry people who feel very strongly aggrieved because they claim I erred by (allegedly) saying that the ancient Stoics were atheists or agnostics. That, of course, is not what I said. We’re all familiar with religious fundamentalism in Christianity, Islam, and other world religions but it turns out that some individuals also want to approach Stoicism in pretty dogmatic (modern sense of the word) manner. I was somewhat taken aback by the ferocity of the backlash against my (imagined) transgressions, especially coming from other Stoics as we’re all meant to be pretty chill about these things, basically. Among other things, I was apparently a liar, a fraud, a bigot, and a charlatan, because of my views. Here’s a typical example of one email (from a barrage of seven sent in one day) that I received from one particular aggrieved individual who somehow perceived my personal agnosticism as “bullying” and aggressively “arguing down” his own “theistic” conception of Stoicism:
The funny part is that when I first came across you my impression was that you were a self serving egotistical person who had no real interest in Stoicism other than to promote your own business by using [Stoic Week] to give yourself some credibility. But I decided that as I did not really know you I would set such ideas aside and address you according to what you said. And what you, together with a number of other people, said came across as an attempt to argue down (bully?) any person that questioned the limitations of the Stoicism being presented, especially any person who addressed the theistic nature of Stoicism.
(For what it’s worth, my previous businesses, which were a CBT clinic in Harley Street and a psychotherapist training school in South London, had virtually nothing to do with my work on Stoicism, which I’ve now been studying for well over twenty years. And Stoic Week is a registered non-profit project run by volunteers. I can easily just ignore comments like these, and far worse that I’ve received, but I am concerned about other people, especially newcomers to Stoicism, being hounded and bullied online by some of the same individuals. That’s something that moderators, where possible, should step in to prevent. )
Over the past six years, I’ve received quite a lot of emails, PMs, and other comments like that, from various strangers on the Internet. (By the way, it never ceases to amaze me how well some people think they can read your mind and judge your character without ever having actually met you.) According to some of these (pretty angry) “religious” Stoics, I was being dishonest, and misrepresenting things on purpose, and refusing to answer questions or back up my claims. In fact, I spent many hours answering their questions about this topic online, probably far too many hours, trying to explain that my position was not what they seemed to believe! I have a policy, though, of politely withdrawing from conversations when people begin introducing personal attacks, like calling me a liar and stuff, which is what tended to happen when things got heated. One of the criticisms repeated many times by one of my most vocal critics was that my previous article didn’t include any references to modern scholars. I heard that a lot. Well, the article was actually intended to provide my own commentary on the primary sources. It contains dozens of references to passages in ancient texts, and it’s pretty big already, so I didn’t want to turn it into something the size of a doctoral thesis by adding more and more commentary from modern academic authors. It was just meant to be a short blog post! Nevertheless, he was wrong. It does, in fact, contain references to about six or seven modern authors/scholars who have written on Stoicism including Pierre Hadot, Frank McLynn, C.R. Haines, and John Sellars.
I got bombarded with angry comments about this again yesterday, though. So as it keeps coming up periodically I decided to sit down and write a statement explaining as clearly as possible my attitude toward religion, in relation to Stoicism. That way I can hopefully just send this to the people who want to argue about it rather than getting drawn into endless heated debates. (So if you want to find me, I’ll be in the garden listening to the radio and eating watermelon.) Anyway, once and for all, here are my personal opinions on this…
I do not hate religion. I’ve always been fascinated by it, in fact. I am an agnostic, leaning toward atheism, but I’m also very interested in and place great value upon all world religions. As a teenager I read the Bible, the Apocrypha, the Gnostic corpus from Nag Hammadi, which I studied very closely, and many Christian mystical texts such as The Cloud of Unknowing, The Imitation of Christ, Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite, St. John of the Cross, and so on. It was actually my interest in Neoplatonism, Christian mysticism and Gnosticism that led me to study Stoicism. However, I was also particularly interested in Buddhism. As a student, I meditated daily, attended Buddhist retreats, and was secretary to the university Buddhist society. (I even have a Buddhist tattoo!) I practised yoga and read many yogic texts. Over the years, I also studied the Dhammapada, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, Tao Te Ching, Chaung Tzu, and even the I Ching, and countless other Oriental scriptures. In fact, although my first degree is in philosophy, I also took courses in cultural anthropology, because I was interested in shamanism and animism. In addition, in the History of Religions department, I studied Buddhism and Hinduism, mainly focusing on the Gita and Dhammapada.
And not much has changed. I’ve had a lifelong fascination with comparative religion, which endures to this very day. It was first inspired by reading Rudolph Otto’s The Idea of the Holy. The only major tradition about which I have to confess my ignorance is Islam because my studies in philosophy meant I didn’t have time to attend classes on it at university. As I noted earlier it was my interest in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism that led me to become interested in Stoicism, around the time I finished my philosophy degree, in 1996, and I’ve been lucky enough to be able to immerse myself in studying the Stoic literature to this day.
However, I’m agnostic. I don’t know for certain whether God exists, whichever god that might mean. I think he probably doesn’t, because I don’t see much evidence of it, so I lean toward atheism. I don’t, however, hold that view strongly, because I might be wrong. I don’t believe that anyone can know with certainty that God exists and so I view it as ultimately an indifferent question with regard to the goal of life, because it seems to me to require speculation or a judgement based on probability. And so I don’t really mind whether anyone agrees with me or not in that regard. It’s a matter of indifference to me. (So I’ll be glad when I’ve finished writing this piece if it means I don’t have to keep arguing with angry people on the Internet about it!) 😉
With regard to Stoicism. I have always accepted (like everyone else) that most of the ancient Stoics believed in a provident God called Zeus. Cleanthes, of course, wrote a famous Hymn to Zeus, in which he literally instructed his Stoic students to sing hymns of praise to Zeus, their divine father, creator, and benefactor:
Most glorious of Immortals, mighty God, Invoked by many a name, O sovran King Of universal Nature, piloting This world in harmony with Law,—all hail!
Now, I cannot honestly say with certainty that “all of the ancient Stoics” believed in this for the simple reason that only about 1% of the Stoic literature survives, and there were loads of Stoics, with different beliefs, in different countries, spanning a period of half a millennium. Stoicism was, and still is, a philosophy not a religion. Perhaps others will disagree with my definition of the word “religion”, which is fine, but by that I mean that Stoicism encouraged its followers to question their assumptions very deeply, using the Socratic method, which inevitably meant that the school tolerated considerable disagreement about stuff like theology. (Sorry but the fact is it did.) Traditionally Stoicism also believed in divination, because it followed from their conception of Zeus as provident, organizing and planning the world in a causally determined manner, that the future could be predicted by priests who knew how to read the entrails of sacrificial animals and whatnot. (Like tea-leaf reading but a bit messier.)
What is more, they say that divination in all its forms is a real and substantial fact, if there is really Providence. And they prove it to be actually a science on the evidence of certain results: so Zeno, Chrysippus in the second book of his De divinatione, Athenodorus, and Posidonius in the second book of his Physical Discourse and the fifth book of his De divinatione. But Panaetius denies that divination has any real existence. (Diogenes Laertius)
Strangely, though, even the most ardent proponents of “traditional Stoicism” today don’t seem to go so far as to employ ancient divination. Ancient Stoics were also free to reject the whole concept of divination, though, because philosophical beliefs are based on reason and subject to constant questioning, whereas religious beliefs, according to my definition at least, tend to be based primarily on faith, divine revelation, or cultural traditions. For what it’s worth, that would mean that some types of Buddhism might be better described as a philosophy rather than a religion, although there are other forms of Buddhism that appear to me more like the Judaeo-Christian religions. (Buddhism is a huge and very diverse tradition, of course.)
There were certainly Greek philosophers who rejected or at least radically questioned belief in the gods. (No, seriously there were; such as Theodorus the Atheist for a start, who was a contemporary of Zeno of Citium.) There’s also Bion of Borysthenes, who we’re told followed Theodorus, but is also associated with Cynic philosophy, and “would often vehemently assail belief in the gods”, and “denied that the gods really exist”, although he allegedly repented on his deathbed. (Bion seems to have had the Macedonian King Antigonus II Gonatas as his patron, who surrounded himself with a circle of philosophers, incidentally, but was best-known for being a student of Zeno and a patron of the Stoic school.)
So given the paucity of evidence to the contrary I would say it’s possible that at least one or two guys out of the thousands of ancient Stoics may not have been 100% sure that God exists but, again, whether they did or not is basically indifferent to me. We know that most Stoics were pantheists who believed the whole universe was a single, perfectly rational, living organism called Zeus who cared providentially for humankind. I don’t believe that. We do also know that some famous ancient Stoics didn’t believe that either and substituted other theological beliefs instead, which happens to confirm that the school tolerated diverse opinions and was not rigidly doctrinaire in this regard.
Example #1: Aristo of Chios rejected the importance of theology completely and was considered a renegade or “heterodox Stoic“. Cicero says he was “in a state of complete uncertainty” about whether or not God was alive (“animate”), because he denied God could have sensation (presumably because he has no eyes or ears, etc.) and Aristo also couldn’t conceive of his form. However, although he was considered a “heterodox Stoic” he was still labelled a “Stoic”. There is no reference to Aristo actually leaving the school or joining another school. (Indeed, Marcus Aurelius was inspired centuries later to commit his life to Stoicism after reading Aristo’s books.)
Example #2: Boethus of Sidon was a famous Stoic best known for having totally rejected Stoic pantheism but, again, there’s no indication that he was booted out of the school for that. He wrote several books on Stoic theology and philosophy of nature. We know he believed in provident God but not the pantheistic Zeus of the early Stoics. He believed that instead of permeating the whole cosmos, God dwells far away from us in the sphere of the fixed stars. That was okay because Stoicism was always a philosophy and encouraged Socratic questioning and not a religion based primarily on faith or tradition, or if you prefer it wasn’t a rigidly orthodox and doctrinaire type of religion.
So can you be a Stoic and be an agnostic or even an atheist? The short answer is that I think it’s an indifferent question. If someone managed to persuade me that I couldn’t call myself a “Stoic” if I happen to be agnostic then I’d probably say “Sure, fine, I’ll just call myself something else” and it wouldn’t really ruin my day too much, to be honest. (I’m still waiting to be persuaded.) However, as it happens, I believe that the ancient Stoics considered the central doctrine of their philosophy, as we’re repeatedly told, to be their definition of the nature of the good: virtue is the only true good. It seems to me that as long as you believe that then you’re pretty much a Stoic, whatever else you believe, within reason. It’s all good! It’s crystal clear from the ancient Stoic texts that the definition of the supreme good as virtue was the central doctrine of their school. Cicero calls it the cornerstone of their whole philosophy, for example.
Suppose, hypothetically, that there were such a thing as a modern-day agnostic Sage, someone exceptionally wise, just, courageous, and temperate, who called himself a “Stoic” but who happened to feel it’s impossible to be certain whether or not God exists. He believes that Darwinism and modern scientific cosmology provide a sufficiently plausible explanation for why things around us look almost as though they were designed by an invisible craftsman to work the way they do. So he rejects Zeno’s use of the Argument from Design, in other words, and doesn’t accept that it conclusively proves a provident God exists, called Zeus, who planned everything and cares about humankind. (How many people today do actually believe in the Argument from Design apart from Christian fundamentalists?)
Let’s suppose we had a time machine and could send our perfect “Stoic” back in time to meet Marcus Aurelius. So he’s perfectly wise and just, courageous and temperate, but he’s not sure about the whole Zeus thing. Would Marcus Aurelius say: “Get out of here you fake, you’re not a real Stoic!” I don’t know. Neither do you. I’d guess probably not, though. Why? Because he was a philosopher, first and foremost, and not a religious fundamentalist. Marcus, like other Stoics, believed that virtue is the only true good, and that someone virtuous is therefore good, and could be a Sage, perhaps even if they happen to be uncertain whether Zeus is real or not, or to agree with Zeno and Cleanthes on the theological details.
As most people who have actually read The Meditations tend to notice, Marcus refers to “God or atoms”, or a similar trope, about ten times. (C.R. Haines, his translator, says nine but I’m pretty sure I spotted another one he missed.) Example: “Recall once again this alternative: if not a wise Providence [God], then a mere jumble of atoms…” (4.3). Similar figures of speech are also found in Seneca and Epictetus, all three of our major surviving sources for Stoicism, so personally I take that to suggest this was most likely a very well-known Stoic argument and probably came from an earlier source all three share in common. I appreciate other people may believe these passages could be interpreted differently but my belief is that Marcus is saying to himself that even if he didn’t believe that the whole universe was being planned and organized by a provident God called Zeus, who cares about humankind, even if it was all just the chance product of the random collision of atoms, like many people believe today, Stoic Ethics would still be rational and justified in that world. In his “God or atoms” passages, Marcus says that even if we live in a godless world just the random aimless collision of atoms, it doesn’t matter, as long as we are not aimless ourselves but have virtue as our goal (9.28), because we have our ruling faculty (hegemonikon) to guide us using reason (12.14), and we can still view ourselves as part of the whole and akin, like a brother, to all other rational beings (10.6), therefore we would still have no reason to complain or feel harassed (8.17; 9.39). The people who want to argue that Stoic Ethics is inconceivable without belief in God either just completely ignore these and other related passages or they tie themselves in knots trying to interpret Marcus as meaning the opposite of what he actually said, ten times.
How on earth, you may ask, could Marcus possibly believe that Stoic Ethics might be plausible without reference to God? (Or at least people who are really religious sometimes say that.) Well, blow me down if the Cynic philosophy, from which Stoicism itself emerged, didn’t consist of a fundamentally similar ethical doctrine, that virtue is the only true good, without any reference to theology. (As did other ancient philosophies.) Diogenes the Cynic is variously portrayed as saying that the gods don’t exist, that they do exist, or that he’s not sure. He didn’t care, basically. The Cynics, funnily enough, had a notoriously cynical (small c) attitude toward all forms of religion, which they sneered at in all sorts of ways. Diogenes thought it was hilarious, for example, that people would pray for good health rather than just adopting a healthy way of living. He reputedly used a wooden statue of the god Hercules as firewood to cook his lentils. (Hercules was originally a Greek hero and demi-god, incidentally, but according to some versions of the myth Zeus granted him an apotheosis, making him a god in his own right.) The Cynics, the legendary forerunners of Stoicism, were generally perceived as thumbing their noses at all forms of religion and as regarding the question of God’s existence with fundamental indifference, because it was totally irrelevant to their conception of virtue and their philosophical way of life.
Marcus quite possibly, at least in my reading of the evidence, started off as a Cynic before becoming a Stoic. He certainly knew Cynics and had read about Cynic philosophy, which he mentioned in The Meditations. So the notion that you could believe in virtue ethics without bringing God into the equation would hardly have come as a massive surprise to him, contrary to what some people might want to tell you. He knew fine well that lots of philosophers, throughout the centuries, held broadly similar ethical views to his own but didn’t use the existence of Providence as justification for them. As mentioned above, his private letters appear to state that he was finally convinced to dedicate his life to philosophy after reading Aristo of Chios, a Stoic who totally rejected the study of theology. So these observations probably explain why Marcus keeps banging on about “God or atoms” in his private notes: he’s reminding himself that even if doubts do creep into his mind about religion, it shouldn’t cause his Stoicism to waver. He knows, from the example of countless other philosophers, that he still has sufficient reason to live virtuously with or without Providence looking over his shoulder.
Moreover, Marcus and the other Stoics didn’t live in a bubble. They knew about other philosophies. Marcus had also studied Platonism and Aristotelianism under private tutors in the imperial household for years and he’d read Cicero and Lucretius the Epicurean, and presumably a load of other stuff we’ve never even heard of because he was a highly-educated and intelligent man, with a lot of books at his disposal. He wasn’t a dunce. He knew that Skeptical counter-arguments could easily be used to challenge traditional arguments for belief in the existence of God, like the Argument for Design. (“Everything looks like it must have been designed by someone, therefore it was.” – really?) He clearly believed in God but he also realized some people didn’t and that Skeptical arguments had been widely circulated for many centuries that could challenge or refute the traditional Stoic reasons for believing in Providence. So, presumably like many Stoics before him, he bolstered his Stoicism by providing himself with the argument that even if someone logically persuaded him that Providence doesn’t exist and the world is just the pretty side-effect of a load of atoms bouncing around, like the Epicureans and other atomists said, it doesn’t really matter because he could still carry on being virtuous and a Stoic anyway, as long as he follows his own nature, by living in accord with reason.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems fairly obvious to me that’s what he meant when he says repeatedly that whether “God or atoms” explain the universe, either way he should follow Stoic Ethics . (See my previous article by the way for all the references to these passages, and everything else I’ve mentioned.) I think that’s why the Stoics were able to consider individuals like Socrates, Pythagoras, and Diogenes the Cynic to be wise and virtuous even though they didn’t share the same theological beliefs as the Stoic school. If Socrates or Diogenes the Cynic walked into Epictetus’ school and said “Hey can I be a Stoic?” would Epictetus boot them out saying “No because you’re not certain that Zeus exists and is provident, get lost!” I don’t know. Neither do you. I’d guess probably not, though. In fact, the Stoics believed Cynicism offered a “shortcut” to virtue, compared with ordinary Stoicism. It’s pretty tricky, though, for anyone who wants to portray the assimilation of Stoic theological doctrines as mandatory to explain how a way of life that completely ignores those doctrines came to be be held up as a shortcut to Stoic virtue.
The ancient Stoics believed that virtue is the only true good, and that’s the central doctrine or cornerstone of their whole philosophy. I think virtually all of them must have believed in a provident God called Zeus but there might have been one or two, over the 500 year period we’re talking about, who weren’t sure because they were doing philosophy and using the Socratic method of questioning rather than just indoctrinating their students into religious dogmas based on the teacher’s say-so. None of the Stoics claimed to have that kind of absolute authority. None of them claimed to be wise: that’s why it’s called the Stoic school and wasn’t (except for a short spell) named Zenonism after Zeno (Zenon in Greek), its founder. There is no Stoic pope. You do philosophy and if you arrive at the same conclusions as them then you might as well call yourself a Stoic. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but if you want to be a Stoic you’re going to have to actually do philosophy. Turns out Stoicism is not a personality cult like Epicureanism or Pythagoreanism were (sorry guys!) and you might actually have to think for yourself rather than just rote learn the sayings of the founders and repeat them like a parrot.
What then? Shall I not follow in the footsteps of my predecessors? I shall indeed use the old road, but if I find one that makes a shorter cut and is smoother to travel, I shall open the new road. Men who have made these discoveries before us are not our masters, but our guides. Truth lies open for all; it has not yet been monopolized. And there is plenty of it left even for posterity to discover. (Seneca, Letter 33)
Epictetus is even more emphatic. He repeatedly warns his students that reading the books of famous Stoics such as Chrysippus and committing their teachings to memory is just another vice, a sort of intellectual vanity, unless they actually learn to think for themselves and apply philosophical reasoning in daily life. He says that the real evidence of having learned Stoicism should be visible in someone’s ability to master his fears and desires, like the physique of an athlete is evidence of their training. We should judge him by the signs of virtue he exhibits in life, not by his ability to recite a catechism of “orthodox” Stoic dogmas – indeed, that would be absurd.
In any case, by the time Marcus Aurelius was around the whole Stoic movement was pretty loosely defined and leaderless but he was still famous, even in his own lifetime as a “Stoic” philosopher. If Marcus Aurelius woke up one day and said “Hmmmm… God or atoms? You know, I’m not 100% sure about that bit anymore but I still agree with the rest of it” would people have stopped calling him a Stoic? Probably not, right? As long as he still lived like a Stoic, exhibited the Stoic virtues, and was committed to the belief that virtue is the only true good. To hear some people talk these days, you’d think there were “Stoic police” going around making sure of everyone’s Stoic orthodoxy but, guess what, there weren’t! In Marcus Aurelius’ day there wasn’t even a leader of the Stoic school so there was nobody with the authority to enforce any sort of rigid orthodoxy any more than there is today – thank goodness. The last Stoic scholarch (head of the school) was Panaetius and he’s been pushing up daisies, six feet under, since the second century BC, nearly three hundred years before the time of Marcus Aurelius.
At the end of the day, though, it’s fundamentally indifferent whether you call yourself a “Stoic” or not. The only advantage is that you can more easily hang out with other fascinating people who like to call themselves “Stoic”, most of whom happen to be agnostics or atheists anyway, whether the fundamentalist-types like that or not. By contrast, if you said “I’m totally into everything Marcus Aurelius said and I try to live my life by it but I’m not actually a real Stoic because I don’t worship Zeus” most people would probably look at you like you were crazy. By the way, people who are really into religion and Stoicism nevertheless vary tremendously in their level of commitment to the ancient traditions. One guy got really annoyed with me for using the phrase “worship Zeus” although that’s literally what the ancient Stoics were talking about. I pointed out to him that another guy I’d been arguing with online actually had a profile picture of himself dressed in the robes of an ancient Greek priest and that he did literally worship the Greek gods. (Over the years I’ve met quite a few modern-day individuals who combine Stoicism with Hellenistic religious practices.) At the other end of the scale someone who was arguing with me about how all Stoics absolutely must believe in divine Providence suddenly changed his tune after admitting that he didn’t know what the word “Providence” means (pronoia in Greek) and I showed him a dictionary definition. “Oh, if that’s what it means then, no, I don’t actually believe in it; sorry for bothering you.” Often, I find that the more determined someone is to argue to the death about something on the Internet the more likely it is that they probably haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about. There are plenty of people online who will argue with you about Stoicism until they’re blue in the face and call you all sorts of idiots if you don’t agree with them. Then, a few hours, or days, later they’ll casually admit they’ve not actually got round to reading any books on the subject yet. That’s life, folks: welcome to the Internet!
So, anyway, if you’ve got to the end of this and you’re a super-religious Stoic who’s still really angry with me for not being sure whether God exists or not then, well, thanks at least for your patience. I really don’t hate you or anything you believe. I’m just not 100% sure you’re right. I also think that, especially as Stoics, we should all be more tolerant of others who happen to disagree with our beliefs. In any case, being so angry and sending me these emails and messages calling me names probably just does you more harm than good, my friend. If you ever want to talk about it in a sort of friendly dispassionate way feel free to get in touch, though. Thanks! 😉
Postscript
Just out of curiosity, I polled my Facebook group for Stoicism to find out their religious views. Surprisingly, most of those who responded (n=663) are atheists, and agnostics like me are not the majority.
50% – I’m an atheist.
29% – I’m an agnostic.
14% – I believe God exists but I don’t believe he resembles the Stoic conception of Zeus or Providence.
8% – I believe God exists and he resembles the Stoic conception of Zeus or Providence.
So 78% are either atheists or agnostics, although they’re “into” Stoicism, and only 22% believe in God, either Stoic-style Zeus or some other definition.
