Donald J. RobertsonBelow are links to two new articles that I wrote for The Guardian newspaper and the Institute of Art and Ideas (IAI). They were both shared by thousands of people online. I wanted to try to explain very simply why Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism might be relevant to people struggling with the psychological challenges of the pandemic.
Thanks. Yes, of course, you can have my permission.
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.
Character, is the essay in which Emerson perhaps says most about the Stoics. There he argues that although they influenced many later authors, “with every repeater something of the creative force is lost”, and so we should “go back to each original moralist”, including the Stoics, in order to read such wisdom from those who “speak originally”.
However, Emerson believed that Stoicism expressed a kind of perennial wisdom such that when the mind attains enlightenment by its own means,
It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno [the founder of Stoicism] and Arrian [who wrote down the Discourses of Epictetus] than with persons in the house. — The Over-Soul
Emerson’s admiration for the Stoics is clear across many of his writings. He typically lists the Stoics alongside other great moralists, from Moses to Buddha, such as in the following passage:
In strictness, the vital refinements are the moral and intellectual steps. The appearance of the Hebrew Moses, of the Indian Buddha; in Greece, of the Seven Wise Masters, of the acute and upright Socrates, and of the stoic Zeno; in Judaea, the advent of Jesus, and, in modern Christendom, of the realists Huss, Savonarola and Luther, — are casual facts which carry forward races to new convictions and elevate the rule of life. — Civilization
For the sake of readability and brevity, I’ve omitted these lists from some of the quotes in this article, allowing us to focus more clearly on what Emerson is saying about the Stoics, although he’s often speaking more generally at the same time.
How much more are men than nations! the wise and good souls, the stoics in Greece and Rome, Socrates in Athens… than the foolish and sensual millions around them! so that, wherever a true man appears, everything usually reckoned great dwarfs itself; he is the only great event, and it is easy to lift him into a mythological personage. — Progress of Culture
In Society and Solitude, he lists the “The Sentences of Epictetus” and of Marcus Antoninus, i.e., The Encheiridion and The Meditations, respectively, as books that “acquired a semi-canonical authority in the world, as expressing the highest sentiment and hope of nations”. It’s perhaps telling that Emerson likes to refer to the Stoics as moral aphorists rather than systematizers of a complete philosophical worldview.
In an article titled The Sovereignty of Ethics, Emerson poses the question “How is the new generation to be edified?” He replies that “A new Socrates, or Zeno”, the founder of Stoicism, may be born into the modern world “and bring asceticism, duty, and magnanimity into vogue again.”
It is true that Stoicism, always attractive to the intellectual and cultivated, has now no temples, no academy, no commanding Zeno or [Marcus Aurelius] Antoninus. It accuses us that it has none… — The Sovereignty of Ethics
Emerson says that the ethics of Stoicism has not been formulated into concrete “scientific scriptures to become its Vulgate for millions” because it inspires us in the form of “joyful sparkles”, recorded for their beauty and the delight they give us; their priceless good to mankind is that “they charm and uplift, not that they are imposed.”
[Stoicism] has not yet its first hymn. But, that every line and word may be coals of true fire, ages must roll, ere these casual wide-falling cinders can be gathered into broad and steady altar-flame. — The Sovereignty of Ethics
Emerson holds Marcus Aurelius in especially high regard, such as in his essay titled Character, where he refers to “ a certain secular progress of opinion”, which makes the life and wisdom of ancient authors accessible to everyone, such that “Socrates and Marcus Aurelius are allowed to be saints”. Emerson says that his aunt, Mary Moody Emerson, an exceptionally well-read woman, was known to him as a fan of Marcus Antoninus. Perhaps it was to her that he owed his own interest in Marcus’ book, The Meditations.
In Culture, Emerson is apparently arguing that great men must be willing to be disliked by some.
He who aims high, must dread an easy home and popular manners.” Heaven sometimes hedges a rare character about with ungainliness and odium, as the burr that protects the fruit. If there is any great and good thing in store for you, it will not come at the first or the second call, nor in the shape of fashion, ease, and city drawing-rooms. Popularity is for dolls. “Steep and craggy,” said Porphyry, “is the path of the gods.”
However, this leads him immediately into the example of Marcus Aurelius:
Open your Marcus [Aurelius] Antoninus. In the opinion of the ancients, he was the great man who scorned to shine, and who contested the frowns of fortune. They preferred the noble vessel too late for the tide, contending with winds and waves, dismantled and unrigged, to her companion borne into harbor with colors flying and guns firing. There is none of the social goods that may not be purchased too dear, and mere amiableness must not take rank with high aims and self-subsistency. — Culture
In Character, Emerson claims that morality consists precisely in the direction of the will toward universal ends whereas vice focuses on securing our private ends. “He is moral, — we say it with Marcus Aurelius and with Kant, — whose aim or motive may become a universal rule, binding on all intelligent beings”, whereas the sacrifice of public good to a private interest is always the stamp of vice.
All the virtues are special directions of this motive; justice is the application of this good of the whole to the affairs of each one; courage is contempt of danger in the determination to see this good of the whole enacted; love is delight in the preference of that benefit redounding to another over the securing of our own share; humility is a sentiment of our insignificance when the benefit of the universe is considered. – Character
In the same essay, Emerson makes the intriguing claim that the “Maxims of Antoninus”, The Meditations, like The Upanishads, do not invade one’s freedom in the form of an external command, like the Bible does, but merely offer moral suggestions. He says this is “the secret of the mischievous result that, in every period of intellectual expansion, the Church ceases to draw into its clergy those who best belong there, the largest and freest minds”, and they find themselves coldly received and out of place whenever they do join the clergy. Whereas with the Stoics:
This charm in the Pagan moralists, of suggestion, the charm of poetry, of mere truth, (easily disengaged from their historical accidents which nobody wishes to force on us,) the New Testament loses by its connection with a church. — Character
In Character, Emerson also says that sufficiency of character leads us to ask, with Marcus Aurelius, “What matter by whom the good is done?”, in an expression of humility. He quotes this passage again in Greatness, in order to argue that a great man cares more about real learning than about the appearance of learning.
Say with Antoninus, “If the picture is good, who cares who made it? What matters it by whom the good is done, by yourself or an other?” If it is the truth, what matters who said it? If it was right, what signifies who did it? — Greatness
In the final analysis, though, although Emerson shares some fundamental beliefs in common with the Stoics, he tends to refer to them in a somewhat haphazard way. That’s his style, of course, but it makes it more difficult to compare his philosophy with theirs.
For example, in one place he quotes Marcus on the lack of affection found among the elite:
Marcus Antoninus says, that Fronto told him, “that the so-called high-born are for the most part heartless;” whilst nothing is so indicative of deepest culture as a tender consideration of the ignorant. — Considerations by the Way
Elsewhere he employs a saying from Marcus concerning belief in the gods:
The weight of the Universe is pressed down on the shoulders of each moral agent to hold him to his task. The only path of escape known in all the worlds of God is performance. You must do your work, before you shall be released. And as far as it is a question of fact respecting the government of the Universe, Marcus Antoninus summed the whole in a word, “It is pleasant to die, if there be gods; and sad to live, if there be none.” — Worship
In another essay, he quotes Marcus’ views on the relationship between morality and aesthetics:
All high beauty has a moral element in it, and I find the antique sculpture as ethical as Marcus Antoninus: and the beauty ever in proportion to the depth of thought. Gross and obscure natures, however decorated, seem impure shambles; but character gives splendor to youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and gray hairs. An adorer of truth we cannot choose but obey, and the woman who has shared with us the moral sentiment, — her locks must appear to us sublime. — Beauty
Emerson is more interested, in other words, in mining the Stoic literature for memorable sayings than in studying their main ideas or comparing them to his own. Perhaps that’s just like saying that he engages with them more as a poet than as a philosopher.
Emerson also says some interesting things about the Stoic philosopher Seneca in his essay on Plutarch.
Plutarch is genial, with an endless interest in all human and divine things; Seneca, a professional philosopher, a writer of sentences, and, though he keep a sublime path, is less interesting, because less humane; and when we have shut his book, we forget to open it again. There is a certain violence in his opinions, and want of sweetness. He lacks the sympathy of Plutarch. He is tiresome through perpetual didactics. He is not happily living. — Plutarch
Emerson does admire Seneca’s worldliness, in a sense, though.
Seneca was still more a man of the world than Plutarch; and, by his conversation with the Court of Nero, and his own skill, like Voltaire’s, of living with men of business and emulating their address in affairs by great accumulation of his own property, learned to temper his philosophy with facts. He ventured far, — apparently too far, — for so keen a conscience as he inly had. Yet we owe to that wonderful moralist illustrious maxims ; as if the scarlet vices of the times of Nero had the natural effect of driving virtue to its loftiest antagonisms. — Plutarch
Emerson quotes another author who refers to Seneca as a “pagan Christian” who would be good reading for “our Christian pagans”. Emerson himself goes on to describe Seneca as “Buddhist in his cold abstract virtue, with a certain impassibility beyond humanity.”
Emerson quotes Seneca as having called pity “that fault of narrow souls.” However, he contrasts that remark with Seneca’s saying “God divided man into men, that they might help each other” and “The good man differs from God in nothing but duration.” Like many commentators on Seneca, Emerson senses a contradiction between his life and morals: “His thoughts are excellent, if only be had the right to say them.”
Emerson perhaps didn’t embrace Stoicism more completely because he believed the perennial wisdom it contains can be found everywhere and is sometimes better exemplified in other sources.
Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome. Without war, no soldier; without enemies, no hero. The sun were insipid, if the universe were not opaque. And the glory of character is in affronting the horrors of depravity, to draw thence new nobilities of power: as Art lives and thrills in new use and combining of contrasts, and mining into the dark evermore for blacker pits of night. What would painter do, or what would poet or saint, but for crucifixions and hells? And evermore in the world is this marvellous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats. Not Antoninus, but a poor washer-woman said, “The more trouble, the more lion; that’s my principle.” — Considerations by the Way
One thing certainly lacking in Emerson, which he nevertheless admires is the Stoic praise of “laconic” (concise, like a Spartan) speech.
Spartans, stoics, heroes, saints and gods use a short and positive speech. They are never off their centres. — The Superlative
However, Emerson’s flamboyant turn of phrase sometimes lends powerful expression to Stoic ideas. For instance, one of the major themes of his writings is, of course, self-reliance and he finds himself repeatedly turning to the Stoics when describing this ideal.
But what does the scholar represent? The organ of ideas, the subtle force which creates Nature and men and states; consoler, upholder, imparting pulses of light and shocks of electricity, guidance and courage. So let his habits be formed, and all his economies heroic; no spoiled child, no drone, no epicure, but a stoic, formidable, athletic, knowing how to be poor, loving labor, and not flogging his youthful wit with tobacco and wine; treasuring his youth. I wish the youth to be an armed and complete man; no helpless angel to be slapped in the face, but a man dipped in the Styx of human experience, and made invulnerable so, — self-helping. — The Man of Letters
Like the Stoic, and unlike the epicure, the ideal scholar, and indeed the ideal man in general, is both self-reliant and self-helping.
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.
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.
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:
Guided self-assessment
Conflict resolution
Mood management for depression
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.
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.
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 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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
“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.
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 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.
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.
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.”
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?
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.
