What the philosopher Marcus Aurelius believed about masculinity
What the philosopher Marcus Aurelius believed about masculinity
Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Just be one!
— Meditations, 10.16
Over the past few decades, there’s been a resurgence of interest in Stoicism. People often confuse stoicism (lower-case), a coping style that involves suppressing or concealing emotions, also called having a “stiff upper-lip,” with Stoicism (capitalized), the ancient Graeco-Roman school of philosophy. Some crudely equate “manliness” with being tough and unemotional (lower-case “stoicism”). I think there’s a more nuanced way to understand how Stoic philosophy might inform a modern man’s conception of his role in society.
The most famous ancient Stoic is Marcus Aurelius, who was emperor of Rome during the height of its power. (I wrote about his use of Stoicism in my book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius.) Marcus was the closest thing the world has ever witnessed to Plato’s ancient ideal of the philosopher-king. Indeed, we’re told that he frequently quoted Plato: “that those states prospered where the philosophers were kings or the kings philosophers.”
He did have enemies, though. In 175 AD, toward the end of his reign, Marcus faced a civil war when the governor-general of the eastern provinces, Avidius Cassius, had himself acclaimed as a rival emperor by the Egyptian legion. Cassius was a cruel general, known to torture his prisoners of war and deserters alike. He criticized Marcus for being a weak and unmanly ruler, calling him “a philosophical old woman.” After only three months, however, Marcus won the civil war when Cassius’ own officers ambushed and beheaded him. No statues of Cassius survive today and his name is all but forgotten. It would seem that Cassius’s brutal brand of masculinity was not in fact a more efficient leadership style than Marcus’ philosopher-king approach.
Marcus actually tackles the question of masculinity head-on in his personal notes on Stoic philosophy as a way of life, known today as Meditations. Here’s what we can learn from the ancient text.
Manliness and fatherhood
My impression is that Marcus inherited certain old-fashioned Roman values from his immediate family, particularly his mother, Domitia Lucilla. Despite being an immensely wealthy and highly educated Roman noblewoman, she preferred a simple way of life “far removed from that of the rich” (Meditations, 1.3). She seems to have been good friends with Junius Rusticus, who became Marcus’ main Stoic tutor. I sometimes wonder whether it could have been Marcus’ mother who first introduced him to the study of Stoic philosophy, which came to shape his concept of what it means to be a man.
Tragically, his father died when Marcus was a child, perhaps as young as three years old. We don’t know the circumstances. Marcus only knew him through early childhood memories and what he learned from family and friends about his father’s reputation, which he sums up in just two words: “modesty and manliness” (Meditations, 1.2). Other Roman nobles would have regarded “modesty” as evidence of weakness. Marcus, on the contrary, saw the modesty for which his father was known as a sign of his manliness and strength of character.
For Marcus, the ability to show kindness and compassion toward others, rather than wallowing in anger, was one of the most important signs of true inner strength and manhood.
Although he lost his father before he even had a chance to know him, Marcus was fortunate to be adopted as a teen by a Roman noble destined to become the emperor known as Antoninus Pius. Marcus made Antoninus Pius his role model in life and decades after his adoptive father’s death Marcus would still describe himself as a “disciple of Antoninus.” Meditations lists in great detail the qualities Marcus most admired in his adoptive father and sought to emulate. The first thing he mentions is that Antoninus was “gentle.” He was “never harsh, or implacable, or overbearing,” and never worked himself up into a lather over anything (Meditations, 1.16). For Marcus, the ability to show kindness and compassion toward others, rather than wallowing in anger, was one of the most important signs of true inner strength and manhood.
Manliness and mastering anger
In Meditations, Marcus goes into detail about Stoic strategies for mastering our feelings of anger. He concludes by saying something remarkably ahead of its time:
And when you do become angry, be ready to apply this thought, that to fly into a passion is not a sign of manliness, but rather, to be kind and gentle. For insofar as these qualities are more human, they are also more manly. It is the man who possesses such virtues who has strength, nerve, and fortitude, and not one who is ill-humoured and discontented. Indeed, the nearer a man comes in his mind to freedom from unhealthy passions [apatheia], the nearer he comes to strength. Just as grief is a mark of weakness, so is anger too, for those who yield to either have been wounded and have surrendered to the enemy. — Meditations, 11.18
Marcus, like other Stoics, didn’t believe that all feelings of anger and grief are signs of weakness. The Stoics accepted that there is a type of emotional reaction that’s inevitable in certain situations. Here, he’s talking about what they called the unhealthy passions, feelings such as fear or grief that someone indulges in and magnifies beyond the bounds set by nature. The wise man, by contrast, doesn’t add to this initial spark of anger or perpetuate it any further. To do so, according to Marcus, is a sign of true weakness. Although he seemed like a powerful figure, the cruel usurper Avidius Cassius was, in this sense, actually a very weak man. He lacked the strength of character and freedom from passionate grief and anger (apatheia) exhibited by Marcus’ birth father and role models such as his adoptive father, Antoninus.
To be more manly, you must first be more human
One of the pitfalls of defining manliness is the potential implication that women don’t possess the qualities you’re describing. The Stoics avoided that by insisting that the virtues are fundamentally the same in men and women. However, they manifest in superficially different ways in each of us, depending on our nature and circumstances. It would be more accurate to say that Marcus is describing prerequisites for manliness, required for humans to fulfill their nature properly — “insofar as these qualities are more human,” as he puts it, “they are also more manly.” Stoics believed that anyone, whether male or female, required this moral and practical wisdom in order to reach their potential in life.
Elsewhere, Marcus affirms his desire to live up to Antoninus’ example and become “one who is manly and mature, a statesman, a Roman, and a ruler” (Meditations, 3.5). To him this means being able to perform his duties, and even face death, in good cheer, without being dependent upon support from others. He sums it up in the maxim: “you must stand upright, not be held upright.” Marcus repeated this striking expression of self-reliance three or four times in Meditations. Finally, he condensed it into just three Greek words:
Ὀρθός, μὴ ὀρθούμενος
“Upright, not righted (by others)” (Meditations, 7.12). That’s the sort of man he admired and wanted to become. Someone with the strength of character to stand on his own two feet and, like his adoptive father Antoninus before him, to repay even anger with unshakeable wisdom, patience, and kindness.
The Roman emperor, and Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius wrote in his personal notes on Stoic philosophy:
A fine reflection from Plato. One who would converse about human beings should look on all things earthly as though from some point far above, upon herds, armies, and agriculture, marriages and divorces, births and deaths, the clamour of law courts, deserted wastes, alien peoples of every kind, festivals, lamentations, and markets [agoras], this intermixture of everything and ordered combination of opposites. — Meditations, 7. 48
This looks like it’s intended as a quote from Socrates in Plato’s writings but, incidentally, it doesn’t appear in any of the surviving Platonic dialogues.
In this and other passages, it’s clear that Marcus is describing a mental exercise — he tells himself to regularly picture such scenes. The French scholar Pierre Hadot coined the name the “View from Above” for this sort of contemplative practice, which appears in many ancient sources — not only the Stoics.
Sometimes it’s tempting to imagine that what’s being described is like the viewpoint of Zeus, or the other gods, atop Mount Olympus, as they look down on mortal affairs below. Indeed, the practice of trying to expand one’s mind by imagining the perspective of a god was a common contemplative exercise in the ancient world and could take several other forms. However, one day a more obvious analogy dawned on me.
I was reading this passage from The Meditations on the Pnyx hill, wondering whether it truly came from Plato or even Socrates. I looked up for a moment at the Acropolis in front of me and suddenly realized that I could almost be reading a description of the view from the Acropolis, where the ruins of the Parthenon, an ancient temple to Athena is located. The word “Acropolis”, in ancient Greek, literally meant “highest part of the city”. It refers to the hill in the centre of Athens that overlooks the ancient agora, the city centre and marketplace. (Indeed, in the passage above, Marcus uses the word agora, translated “marketplace”.)
There are several other passages in The Meditations that appear to relate to the same contemplative practice. For example:
You should always keep these three thoughts at hand… if you were suddenly raised aloft and looked on human affairs from above in all their diversity, with what contempt [or rather indifference] you would view them, seeing at the same time what a host of beings live all around in the air and the ether, and that however often you were raised aloft, you would behold the same things, ever unvarying, ever as short-lived — and it is in these that you set your pride! — Meditations, 12.24
However, in another well-known passage, Marcus actually employs the word acropolis:
Remember that your ruling centre becomes invincible when it withdraws into itself and rests content with itself, doing nothing other than what it wishes, even where its refusal to act is not reasonably based; and how much more contented it will be, then, when it founds its decision on reason and careful reflection. By virtue of this, an intelligence free from passions is a mighty citadel [acropolis]; for man has no stronghold more secure to which he can retreat to remain unassailable from that time onward. One who has failed to see this is merely ignorant, but one who has seen it and fails to take refuge there is beyond the aid of fortune. — Meditations, 8.48
Typical translations of akropolis as “citadel”, etc., obscure the fact that the original Greek implies a high-up place, akin to the “some point far above” mentioned by Marcus in passage 7.48, quoted earlier .
Combining these passages, therefore, a description emerges of the ideal Stoic mind-set as resembling, in Marcus’ own words, an acropolis, high above, looking down on the hustle and bustle of an agora.
Neostoicism
In the sixteenth century, the Neostoic Justus Lipsius actually told the following story about Solon, one of the “seven sages”, which is set in a high tower, presumably on one of the hills, overlooking Athens, quite possibly the Acropolis.
Solon, seeing a very friend of his at Athens mourning piteously, brought him into a high tower and showed him underneath all the houses in that great city, saying to him “Think with yourself how many sundry mournings in times past have been in all these houses, how many at this present are, and in time to come shall be; and leave off to bewail the miseries of mortal folk, as if they were your own.”
Lipsius’ friend advises him to imagine a similarly broad perspective on events, not by literally climbing a hill but by using his imagination to place himself atop Mount Olympus.
I would wish you, Lipsius, to do the like in this wide world. But because you cannot in deed and fact go to, do it a little while in conceit and imagination. Suppose, if it please, that you are with me on the top of that high hill Olympus; behold from there all towns, provinces, and kingdoms of the world, and think that you see even so many enclosures full of human calamities. These are but only theatres and places for the purpose prepared, in which Fortune plays her bloody tragedies.
He is to continually remind himself of the “View from Above” in order to alleviate his distress, but also to remind himself of his own mortality.
Which things think well upon, Lipsius, and by this communication or participation of miseries, lighten your own. And like they [Roman generals] which rode gloriously in triumph, had a servant behind their backs who in the midst of all their triumphant jollity cried out often times “you are a man” [and “remember you must die”], so let this be ever as a prompter by your side, that these things are human, or appertaining to men. For as labour being divided between many is easy, even so likewise is sorrow.
The “View from Above” was a particularly familiar concept to ancient Athenians. This elevated, serene, and somewhat detached perspective on the agora where goods were sold and other important business conducted was the view from the sacred Acropolis in the middle of their city, and from other nearby vantage points on high ground.
Ever since I began researching and writing about Stoicism, about two decades ago, I’ve been looking for ways to capture the basic…
Ever since I began researching and writing about Stoicism, about two decades ago, I’ve been looking for ways to capture the basic psychological practices of Stoicism in the simplest possible set of instructions. The Stoic Mindfulness and Resilience Training (SMRT) online course that I designed for Modern Stoicism was a first step in that direction. It has now been completed by thousands of participants, allowing us to collect data that suggest even a very simplified Stoic routine can have measurable benefits psychologically.
There are many psychological techniques described in the surviving Stoic writings. I counted about eighteen in The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy. (I explain how to use them in daily life in How to Think Like a Roman Emperor.) Some of these are exercises done periodically such as contemplating the world as though seen from above or asking yourself what a perfect Sage would do when faced with certain types of circumstances. I think it’s clear, though, that these are all grounded in one continual practice, which Epictetus called prosoche or “attention”, i.e., paying attention to our ruling faculty (hegemonikon) and the way we use our judgment to form opinions, particularly our value judgments.
Attention (prosoche) is the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude. It is a continuous vigilance and presence of mind, self-consciousness which never sleeps, and a constant tension of the spirit. Thanks to this attitude, the philosopher is fully aware of what he does at each instant, and he wills his actions fully. (Hadot, 1995, p. 84)
In my experience, most people find it natural to refer to this continual attention to their own thought processes as the practice of “Stoic mindfulness”. (Although, it’s not necessarily the same as “mindfulness” in Buddhism.)
More specifically, Epictetus explains that what Stoics should pay continual attention to is the principle that good and evil reside in their own choices rather than in any external events. Whenever we notice ourselves becoming upset we should pause to ask whether the thing we’re concerned about is up to us or not. If not then we shouldn’t assign value to it in a way that causes us to become upset. We should ask ourselves instead what aspects of the situation are up to us — our own thoughts and actions — and how we could respond more wisely by taking greater responsibility for these.
The reason we’re often unaware of this, though, is that our thoughts become fused with our perception of external events. If I’m very upset with someone, I just view them as an awful person. That’s how I see them. Being good or bad is a quality they appear to possess, like being big or small, or having blue eyes or brown ones. In order to pay attention, mindfully, to the way we’re using value judgments we first have to separate them from reality. I have to realize that the “awfulness” I perceive is a quality projected onto the other person by me and not something I’m passively observing that somehow exists apart from me. As Hamlet said, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” For Stoics that’s true of external things, although our own character can certainly still be called either good or bad.
Aaron T. Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy, called this realization, that our thoughts are separate from reality, “cognitive distancing”.
“Distancing” refers to the ability to view one’s own thoughts (or beliefs) as constructions of “reality” rather than as reality itself. (Alford & Beck, 1997, p. 142)
He explained it by analogy with a set of coloured glasses. If you look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles for long enough you might be forgiven for assuming that the whole world is simply coloured pink and seems so to everyone else. Imagine, though, that one day you met someone wearing dark blue glasses who told you that the whole world seemed cold and blue to them. Realizing that the outside world itself is neither completely pink nor blue but that it’s being coloured by the lenses through which you’re looking is cognitive distancing — the ability to notice the distinction between the lens through which you’re looking and the events at which you’re looking.
In cognitive therapy, we sometimes help clients to do this by teaching them to use strange neologisms like the word “catastrophizing”. (Turning a noun into a verb in this way is called “verbing” or “verbification”.) Imagine someone has been dumped by his girlfriend and says “It’s a catastrophe!”, as though he’s just describing an objective fact about the situation. The therapist might encourage him to say instead that he’s “catastrophizing” it, if that helps him to take responsibility for choosing to view it as a catastrophically bad. Indeed, another person might have viewed the same event less catastrophically, with relative indifference, or even as a positive opportunity to learn and grow emotionally. “It’s not events that upset us”, said Epictetus, “but rather our opinions about them.”
In Stoicism, we’re encouraged to continually be on the lookout for these sort of distressing opinions. Epictetus says that whenever you’re troubled emotionally by an impression concerning external events that’s a warning sign that you’ve fused it with a value judgement. He tells his students to respond to upsetting impressions — such as “My partner lied to me; it’s a catastrophe!” — by literally speaking to them as follows: “You are just an impression and not at all the thing you claim to represent.” It’s not a true objective representation of events (phantasia kataleptike), in other words, because it’s fused with a strong value judgment of the kind that distorts events and causes us to experience emotional distress.
Other common ways of gaining cognitive distance include:
Translating your feelings into words by stating the thoughts that are causing them, e.g., “I feel as though everyone hates me and that’s awful.”
Referring to your thoughts in the third person, e.g., “Donald is currently viewing this situation as if it were catastrophic.”
Keeping a tally of the frequency of certain thoughts or feelings so that you increasingly view them as events in their own right.
Writing your thoughts down in a journal or on a whiteboard and viewing them in a detached manner, literally from a distance.
Imagining that your thought is written on a pane of glass through which you’re looking at the event, a bit like looking through rose-tinted glasses but with words such as “This is a catastrophe” scrawled on them.
Imagining being in the shoes of someone who views the same situation differently from you, perhaps even a wise person like Socrates, in order to develop the flexibility to move easily between different viewpoints.
Repeating the thought several times with greater awareness of it being an activity in which you’re engaged, e.g., by saying it aloud very slowly or very quickly.
Imagining how you might view the same situation differently years from now, e.g., if you encountered it many times and got used to dealing with it to the best of your ability or were looking back on it with the benefit of hindsight.
Describing the same situation to yourself in a more matter-of-fact way, without using any emotive language or strong value judgments.
Sometimes also considering the consequences of viewing a situation in a particular way can help you to separate your thoughts from external events and envisage other ways of looking at the same situation. The Stoics frequently reminded themselves of the paradox that, according to their philosophy, passions such as fear and anger do us more harm than the things we’re upset about. Viewing them in this way requires seeing the beliefs underlying them as, in a sense, arbitrary and unhelpful — we could easily look at the situation in a more helpful way.
As Epictetus put it, “everything has two handles”, a broken handle and a good one. When we become upset we’re trying to pick up events using the broken handle, i.e., an unhealthy perspective. However, often just realizing that’s what we’re doing is enough to weaken the grip that unhealthy beliefs and passions have over our mind. All of the techniques above are just gimmicks, in a sense — props to help you get the cognitive knack of separating your value judgments from external events.
I’ve increasingly come to the conclusion that this ability to gain cognitive distance lies at the psychological core of Stoicism. In a sense, it boils down to wholeheartedly embracing the famous precept that “it’s not events that upset us but our opinions about them”. Whereas in CBT it’s usually presented as a cognitive technique to cope with certain difficult situations, in Stoicism it forms part of a whole philosophy of life. Stoic mindfulness, or prosoche, is the continual awareness of how our value judgments are shaping our feelings, particularly when we begin to grow distressed or irritated with life.
This becomes a more general trait of resilience when we apply it across a wide range of situations. However, it’s also maintained by certain underlying philosophical beliefs concerning the nature of our value judgments. Modern psychologists would potentially classify these as “meta-cognitions” — beliefs about beliefs. In a future article, I hope to return to this subject and explore the ways in which Stoic philosophy is meta-cognitive insofar as it teaches us to experience certain types of belief or judgment in a novel manner.
By D. Robertson and T. Codd, originally published in The Behavior Therapist, vol. 42, no. 2, Feb 2019
Abstract: Stoicism provides the clearest example of a system of psychotherapy in ancient Greek or Roman philosophy. Albert Ellis acknowledged that some of the central principles of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy were “originally discovered and stated” by the Stoics and Beck that “the philosophical origins of cognitive therapy can be traced back to the Stoic philosophers.” However, the emphasis on mindfulness and living in accord with values in Stoicism was largely ignored by them and unknown to the third-wave psychotherapists who followed them. This article highlights Stoicism’s similarities to modern mindfulness and acceptance-based CBT and its potential as an approach to building emotional resilience.
Introduction
Socrates considered philosophy to be, among other things, a form of talking therapy, a sort of medicine for the mind. Within a few generations of his death, this idea of philosophy as psychotherapy had become commonplace among the various schools of Hellenistic philosophy. However, it was the Stoics who placed most emphasis on this therapeutic dimension of philosophy. For example, the Roman Stoic teacher Epictetus wrote “It is more necessary for the soul to be cured than the body, for it is better to die than to live badly” (Fragments, 32) and he states bluntly “the philosopher’s school is a doctor’s clinic” (Discourses, 3.23.30). Today, though, most people are unaware of the extent to which ancient Greeks and Romans conceived of philosophy as a type of psychological therapy.
Stoicism survived for five centuries but its therapeutic concepts and practices were largely neglected until the start of the 20th century when a rational approach to psychotherapy began emerging, which held that many emotional and psychosomatic problems were caused by negative self-talk or autosuggestions, which could be amenable to rational disputation. Its leading proponent, the Swiss psychiatrist Paul Dubois, employed Socratic questioning with his patients and taught them the basic principles of a Socratic and Stoic philosophy of life. Indeed, he declared:
If we eliminate from ancient writings a few allusions that gave them local colour, we shall find the ideas of Socrates, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius absolutely modern and applicable to our times. (Dubois, 1909, pp. 108–109).
Dubois also noticed that, paradoxically, the Stoic words of advice he read in the letters of the philosopher Seneca “seem to be drawn from a modern treatise on psychotherapy,” although written in the first century AD.
Dubois placed more emphasis than subsequent psychotherapists on the fundamental distinction Stoics make between what is up to us and what is not. We should, the Stoics believed, learn to assume more responsibility for our own voluntary actions while also becoming more tolerant and accepting of things that merely happen to us. Or as Epictetus put it:
What, then, is to be done? To make the best of what is in our power, and take the rest as it naturally happens. (Discourses, 1.1.17)
This central teaching of Stoicism found perhaps its best-known expression in The Serenity Prayer, written by Reinhold Niebuhr in the 1930s, but made popular by Alcoholics Anonymous. “God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.” However, by the middle of the 20th century Stoicism and rational psychotherapy, based on these venerable philosophical principles, were temporarily eclipsed in popularity by an oddity that was to be rather short-lived by comparison: Freudian psychoanalysis.
Indeed, psychotherapists began to rediscover Stoicism from the 1950s onward through the writings of Albert Ellis, and what would become known as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). Despite the similarity of his approach to that of early rational psychotherapists such as Dubois, Ellis was initially unaware of their writings. However, as far back as his youth, before training as a psychotherapist, Ellis had “read the later Stoics, Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius” (Still & Dryden, 2012, pp. xii-xiii). Indeed, Ellis refers to the Stoics, particularly Epictetus, throughout his writings. Even when he doesn’t mention the Stoics by name, though, Ellis often describes concepts and techniques that seem to demonstrate their influence.
In Ellis’ first major publication on REBT, he famously explained the central premise of this emerging cognitive approach to psychotherapy: emotional disturbances, and associated symptoms, are not caused by external events, as people tend to assume, but mainly by our irrational beliefs about such events. However, he also explained that it was far from being a new idea:
This principle, which I have inducted from many psychotherapeutic sessions with scores of patients during the last several years, was originally discovered and stated by the ancient Stoic philosophers, especially Zeno of Citium (the founder of the school), Chrysippus, Panaetius of Rhodes (who introduced Stoicism into Rome), Cicero [sic], Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The truths of Stoicism were perhaps best set forth by Epictetus, who in the first century A.D. wrote in the Enchiridion: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.” (Ellis, 1962, p. 54)
(Footnote: Cicero was an Academic philosopher not a Stoic, although he was sympathetic to Stoicism and wrote extensively about it making him one of our main sources for information on the philosophy. Beck et al., under the influence of Ellis, reproduce this error in their own account.)
Elsewhere Ellis repeats his conviction that “Many of the principles incorporated in the theory of rational-emotive psychotherapy are not new; some of them, in fact, were originally stated several thousand years ago, especially by the Greek and Roman Stoic philosophers,” and he names Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius in particular as his influences in this regard (Ellis, 1962, p. 35). Indeed, Ellis taught the famous quote from Epictetus above to many of his clients during the initial socialization phase of treatment (Therapists today could better translate the same Greek passage: “People are not emotionally distressed by events but by their beliefs [dogmata] about them.”) Following Ellis, this saying also became extremely well known to subsequent generations of cognitive-behavioral therapists. Although, for some reason, surprisingly few of them chose to explore the writings of Epictetus or others Stoics for themselves.
Mainly through Ellis’ writings, Stoicism continued influence Aaron T. Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy and his colleagues. Beck opened his first book on cognitive therapy by describing how his new style of therapy was founded upon the emerging 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)
Beck also illustrated the cognitive model of emotion with a quote from Marcus Aurelius:
If thou are pained by any external thing, it is not the thing that disturbs thee, but thine own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now. (Marcus Aurelius, quoted in Beck, 1976, p. 263)
He’s talking about suspending irrational and unhealthy value-judgements, incidentally, rather than suppressing automatic thoughts.
Nearly two decades after Ellis had first brought it up, Beck et al. restated this claim that the doctrines of Stoicism constitute the “philosophical origins” of cognitive therapy in their groundbreaking treatment manual for clinical depression:
The philosophical origins of cognitive therapy can be traced back to the Stoic philosophers, particularly Zeno of Citium (fourth century B.C.), Chrysippus, Cicero [sic], Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1979, p. 8).
Like Ellis, they quote the famous passage from Epictetus above, which they hailed as a forerunner of their own cognitive theory of emotion. Moreover, if the causes of emotional disturbance are mainly cognitive this implies the possibility of a cognitive cure. They realized, therefore, that this shared premise had led Stoics and cognitive therapists to the same conclusion: “Control of most intense feelings may be achieved by changing one’s ideas.”
Ellis was only exaggerating slightly when he later claimed: “I am happy to say that in the 1950’s I managed to bring Epictetus out of near-obscurity and make him famous all over again” (Ellis & MacLaren, 2005, p. 10). Indeed, in recent decades, partly as a consequence of CBT’s growing popularity, Stoicism has continued to undergo a wider resurgence in popularity. In the 1980s, Vice Admiral James Stockdale helped popularize Stoic philosophy in the US military. Stockdale documented his reliance on the Stoicism of Epictetus as a means of coping with torture and incarceration during the Vietnam War in Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot (1995). The Tom Wolfe novel about the Stoicism of Epictetus, A Man in Full (1998) reignited popular interest in Stoicism as did director Ridley Scott’s movie Gladiator (2000), which featured Richard Harris as Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. Since then an increasing number of self-help books influenced by Stoicism such as Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way (2014) have appeared. Likewise, a growing number of blog articles and podcasts on the Internet testify to public interest in Stoicism as an approach to self-help and self-improvement. However, these Stoic ideas were ridiculed by Freud’s followers and they would never have resurfaced to this extent if CBT had not effectively replaced the psychodynamic tradition, paving the way for Stoic philosophy to be taken seriously once again.
However, as Stoicism was reaching a wider audience, through self-help literature and the Internet, the field of CBT was changing with the emergence of the third-wave. Third wave therapy introduced greater emphasis on themes like mindfulness, acceptance, and valued living, often turning to Buddhist literature and practices for inspiration. Ironically, though, these themes were already emphasized in the Stoic “philosophical origins” of cognitive therapy. Ellis and subsequently Beck had largely overlooked those aspects of Stoicism. So the next generation of therapists remained largely unaware of the extent to which mindfulness and acceptance were already practices native to ancient Stoicism. Practitioners and researchers began to lose interest in Western philosophy as they turned to Buddhism and eastern thought instead.
Yet many Western clients, and therapists, find Stoicism more congruent with their existing cultural concepts and values. When they learn about the Stoics, they often report a sense of déjà vu as they “join the dots” and realize how it connects countless philosophical themes already familiar to them. From Aesop’s Fables to Hamlet’s “There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so” (also quoted by Ellis), to the Roman poet Horace’s carpe diem (made famous by Robin Williams in Dead Poets’ Society), or the memento mori tradition in the arts (e.g., Damien Hirst’s shark in formaldehyde), Stoic concepts permeate Western culture and literature to this day. It’s as though we’re living among the rubble of a once magnificent temple, without recognizing what it means. Then someone shows us a sketch of what it used to look like and suddenly the landscape is transformed before our eyes as we begin to understand how all the pieces were long ago organized into a whole.
Unfortunately, the popularity of Stoicism, the Greek philosophy, among therapists has also been hampered because of the tendency to confuse it with (lower-case) stoicism, the “stiff upper-lip” personality trait or coping style. The word “stoicism” is often taken to mean crudely suppressing feelings of distress — something potentially quite unhealthy. However, Stoic philosophy teaches a far more nuanced approach to emotional self-regulation, which is more consistent with the aims of psychotherapy. This article will address this and other misconceptions about Stoicism and make the case that it can contribute in important ways to the modern field of cognitive-behavioral therapy.
Who Were the Stoics?
The Stoic school was founded in 301 BC by a Phoenician merchant called Zeno of Citium who had been shipwrecked near Athens. Inspired by the example of Socrates, Zeno became a philosopher. He trained for ten years in the Cynic tradition and studied at the Platonic Academy and the Megarian school, founded by another of Socrates’ followers, before founding his own school combining these influences. He was succeeded as head (scholarch) of the school by Cleanthes of Assos, and then by Chrysippus of Soli, one of the most highly-regarded intellectuals of the ancient world. Between them, these three men defined the foundations of Stoicism.
Moreover, the Athenian school had an unbroken succession of teachers lasting over two hundred years, until Panaetius of Rhodes who died at the end of the second century BC. By that time the philosophy had already gained popularity among Romans and it continued as an important albeit more fragmented tradition right down to the time of the last famous Stoic, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, who died in 180 AD. In other words, Stoicism survived as a living tradition, in ancient Greece and Rome, for over five hundred years.
At a rough estimate, less than one percent of the ancient Stoic writings survive today. We have about a book’s worth of fragments from early Greek Stoics but no complete texts of theirs. Most of our knowledge comes from commentators and from three famous Roman Stoics of the Imperial period: Seneca the Younger, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.
Stoicism was eventually assimilated into Neoplatonism but left an impression on early Christianity. The Stoics are even featured in the New Testament, where St. Paul addresses an audience of Stoic and Epicurean philosophers at the Areopagus in Athens, quoting a line from the Stoic poet Aratus to them. Both traditions share similar ethical values so many modern followers of Stoicism describe it as providing them with a secular alternative to Christianity, based upon philosophical reasoning rather than religious faith.
Following the renaissance there was a revival of interest in Stoicism known as Neostoicism and the influence of the philosophy can particularly be seen in the writings of philosophers such as Justus Lipsius and Anthony Ashley-Cooper (Earl of Shaftesbury), and to some extent also in those of Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, and Montaigne. In addition to its direct influence on Ellis and others, Stoicism also indirectly influenced modern CBT through the writings of these and other influential Western thinkers. For instance, as well as citing the Stoics directly, Beck illustrated the cognitive theory of emotion by quoting Spinoza: “I saw that all the things I feared, and which feared me had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them.” (quoted in Beck, 1976:156).
What did the Stoics Believe?
Ancient schools of philosophy were typically distinguished from one another in terms of their definition of the goal of life. The Stoics rejected the popular notion that the goal of life was pleasure (hedonism), and the more philosophical Epicurean version that equated pleasure with freedom from pain and other unpleasant feelings (ataraxia). They also rejected the Platonic and Aristotelian view that the goal included a combination of virtue and external goods that lie partially outside of our control such as health, wealth and reputation. Instead the Stoics insisted on the hard line that the supreme goal of life is synonymous with arete, which is conventionally translated “virtue” although most scholars feel “excellence” (of character) is a better translation.
The Stoics adopt the fourfold model of virtue first mentioned by Socrates in the dialogues of Plato: Wisdom, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude. However, these were broad conventional headings, which include dozens of other positive character traits. Following Socrates, the Stoics claim that all of these other virtues consist in forms of moral wisdom applied to different areas of life. Justice can be thought of as social virtue in general or what it means to deal wisely with others, both individually and collectively. Temperance and courage are the virtues of self-control: wisdom applied to our desires and fears respectively. So the goal of Stoicism can also be understood as a form of moral or practical wisdom, which is synonymous with living wisely or living rationally. They also equate this with sanity or mental health.
The central doctrine of Stoicism was therefore sometimes expressed as “virtue is the only true good” by which they mean that wisdom and excellence of character are to be valued for their own sake rather than as a means to some other end. Virtue is its own reward, in other words. For modern therapists, an important implication of Stoic psychology is their insistence on a worldview in which doing what is under our direct control to the best of our ability, or living wisely, is valued more highly than pleasure or the avoidance of unpleasant feelings, things not entirely under our control.
The Stoic Handbook of Epictetus provides a concise summary of practical guidance based on Stoic moral and psychological doctrines. It opens with the famous sentence: “Some things are up to us and other things are not.” Epictetus meant that the foundation of Stoic practice was the effort to maintain a clear distinction between what is voluntary and what is not, i.e., between our own actions and what merely happens to us. Modern Stoics call this the “dichotomy of control.” As we’ve seen, this Stoic doctrine was stressed by Dubois and other early rational psychotherapists but not by Ellis or subsequent cognitive-behavioural therapists, although it is still well-known having found popular expression in The Serenity Prayer.
Stoics class everything else as “indifferent” or unimportant with regard to the supreme goal of life — Epictetus tends to sum this up by speaking of things such as “health, wealth, and reputation” as indifferent. These things are also called “externals” by which Stoics mean not that they’re external to the body — the body itself is an indifferent — but external to our volition or sphere of control. A common misconception is that Stoics place no value on the “external” or “indifferent” things. However, one of the defining doctrines of Stoicism holds that wisdom consists precisely in our ability to distinguish between indifferent things rationally according to their relative value. However, this “value” (axia), used in practical decision-making, is completely incommensurate with the value of arete, as the supreme goal of life. Put crudely, for Stoics externals are not worth getting highly upset about, although as we’ll see it’s nevertheless still considered natural to experience some emotions toward them.
There’s much confusion about Stoicism’s view of emotion due partly to problems of translation and also to the tendency to conflate Stoicism, the ancient philosophy, with stoicism, the modern coping style. One of the easiest ways to dispel these misunderstandings is to highlight the distinction Stoic psychology made between good, bad, and indifferent emotions. (The Stoics used the term “passion” to refer to what we would call emotions but also to desires.)
Bad emotions are described as being unhealthy, excessive, and irrational. Crucially they’re under our direct control, at least potentially. It’s perhaps easiest to compare these to cognitive processes like worrying or ruminating or to voluntary (strategic) cognitions involving strong positive or negative value judgements, of an unhealthy and irrational nature.
Good emotions (eupatheiai) are healthy, moderate, and rational, and also under our voluntary control. They supervene upon a healthy rational worldview. Stoics classify all healthy emotions under three headings: rational joy, a healthy aversion to doing wrong, and goodwill toward oneself and others. (The English word “compassion” sits awkwardly with Stoics because it implies “sharing a passion,” an unhealthy emotion, but Stoics refer to something similar as the virtue of kindness.) The goal of ancient Stoic therapy wasn’t the suppression of unhealthy emotions but their transformation into healthy emotions by modification of the underlying beliefs from irrational to rational ones.
“Indifferent” emotion is how we might describe what the Stoics call the “proto-passions” (propatheiai), or initial involuntary stirrings of full-blown passions. The Stoics give examples such as being startled, blushing, turning pale, sweating, stammering, and the initial reactions preceding passions such as fear and anger in general. Seneca highlights their involuntary nature by comparing these emotional reactions to the eye-blink reflex. The Stoics emphasized that even a perfectly wise Stoic philosopher will experience these sort of involuntary emotional reactions in a stressful situation. However, because these primitive emotional reactions are involuntary, they’re neither good nor bad according to Stoic ethics but indifferent. Epictetus therefore said that they’re to be accepted as natural, and an inevitable part of life. We’re not to be afraid of them or consider them to be bad or harmful in themselves but rather to accept them with indifference. They resemble the emotional reactions of non-human animals, which naturally abate over time. However, we’re to be careful not to be “swept along” by them by indulging in worry or rumination, for example, in response to them and thereby amplifying or perpetuating them beyond their natural bounds.
What did the Stoics do?
Ancient Stoicism had a more extensive and sophisticated armamentarium of therapeutic strategies than any other school of philosophy. Most of these are well-known to modern students of Stoicism thanks largely to the scholarly work of a French historian of philosophy called Pierre Hadot who carefully identified a variety of “spiritual exercises” in ancient philosophy, particularly Stoicism. Robertson’s The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (2010) provides a detailed overview of these techniques, which draws extensive parallels between them and psychological strategies employed in modern cognitive-behavioural therapy. The following list is not exhaustive but includes some of the Stoic techniques of most interest to cognitive-behavioral therapists:
Socratic Questioning, which was used by Socrates to undermine irrational assumptions about virtue by exposing contradictions in the other person’s thinking, a process compared to the cross-examination (elenchus) of a witness in a trial, although we’re told it was done tactfully and with compassion.
The Dichotomy of Control, the foundation of Epictetus’ Handbook, which requires maintaining a clear distinction between what is up to us and what is not, i.e., taking more responsibility for our own actions while accepting what merely happens to us.
Separating Judgements from Events, which Shaftesbury called the “sovereign principle” of Stoicism, and Ellis introduced to the CBT field through the saying “It’s not things that upset us but our judgements about them” — comparable to the process called “cognitive distancing” in Beck’s approach.
Stoic Mindfulness, or prosoche (attention), through which Stoics maintain continual attention to their own voluntary thoughts and actions and particularly the distinction between these and external events or automatic thoughts, as in the two preceding techniques.
Stoic Acceptance and Indifference, or apatheia (not apathy but freedom from irrational passions), i.e., external events are viewed dispassionately without attaching strong values or emotions to them.
Contrasting Consequences, through which Stoics imagine beforehand steps required in and likely consequences of different courses of action, typically the contrast between actions guided by unhealthy passions and those in accord with wisdom and virtue — comparable to functional assessment or cost-benefit analysis in CBT.
Postponement of Responses, through which Stoics would wait until strong emotions such as anger or unhealthy desires had naturally abated before deciding what action to take in response to them — comparable to worry postponement or time-out in anger management.
Contemplation of the Sage, considering the virtues of real or imaginary role models or how they would behave in specific situations — comparable to modelling techniques in CBT.
Contemplation of Death, which takes a variety of forms but was considered to be of fundamental importance to the Stoics who sought to adopt a more philosophical attitude toward the existential problem of their own mortality.
The View from Above, which also takes various forms but typically involves picturing events from high overhead or in cosmological terms in order to place them within a broader context in terms both of space and time, something the Stoics and other philosophers found valuable as a way of moderating strong desires and emotions.
Contemplating Transience, this theme is encapsulated in the View from Above but the Stoics generally encouraged themselves to contemplate the temporary nature of all things, including their own lives and the lives of others, as a way of moderating strong emotions.
Contemplation of the Here and Now, a theme particularly emphasized throughout The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, which involves grounding attention in the present moment, partly because this constitutes our locus of control.
Objective Representation, or phantasia kataleptike, the description or mental representation of events in objective terms without strong value judgements or emotive rhetoric — similar to decatastrophizing in CBT.
Premeditation of Adversity, praemeditatio malorum, another famous Stoic exercise, which involves regularly imagining a variety of feared situations as if they’re already befalling you, such as exile, poverty, sickness, dying, etc., in order to mentally rehearse a more philosophical attitude toward them (apatheia) through the use of some of the strategies mentioned above — this clearly resembles various imaginal exposure strategies used in CBT but perhaps a better analogy would be the covert rehearsal of cognitive and behavioural coping strategies in approaches such as Stress Inoculation Training (SIT).
Memorization of Sayings, of which there are many examples in the Stoic texts, which Stoics would learn until they were “ready to hand” in challenging situations — comparable to the use of coping statements in CBT.
Empathic Understanding, trying to understand the perspective, values, and assumptions of others in a rational and balanced manner rather than jumping to hasty conclusions about them because the Stoics were influenced by the famous Socratic paradox that “no man does evil willingly” (or knowingly) — Epictetus, e.g., taught his students to tell themselves “It seemed right to him” when offended by someone’s actions in order to moderate anger and cultivate a more philosophical attitude toward the perceived wrongdoing of others.
Contemplating Determinism, which Dubois had originally assimilated into rational psychotherapy, the Stoics frequently remind themselves to depersonalize upsetting events and view them as an inevitable part of life, e.g., there are people who behave honestly and dishonestly in the world, dishonest people do dishonest things, therefore the wise man is not surprised when he sometimes encounters these things in life.
Some of these general strategies are overlapping and not entirely conceptually distinct, e.g., The View From Above inevitably entails the contemplation of the finitude and transience of material things, and even one’s own mortality. Most of these strategie are also employed in the form of various different specific techniques, e.g., the Stoics often employ a shorthand version of contrasting consequences by reminding themselves of the maxim that irrational fear of something often does us more harm than the thing itself. (Also anger often does us more harm than the thing we’re angry about.) Indeed, there are a very wide variety of cognitive (both imaginal and verbal) and behavioral therapy techniques found in the Stoic literature, which go beyond this list. Many of these are found in other philosophical traditions, especially during the Hellenistic period, and also in the writings of poets such as Horace and Ovid who were influenced by philosophy. However, it’s the Stoics themselves who place most emphasis on these techniques.
We might also ask where and with whom the Stoics used these techniques. Conveniently, the three major surviving sources of Stoic literature provide some good examples:
The Discourses of Epictetus are transcripts of his discussions with groups of students at his philosophical school, where he can be seen answering questions and also employing Socratic questioning, in a way that could be compared to group therapy or a self-help workshop.
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are a private record of his own contemplative practices, like a Stoic self-help or therapy journal.
The letters of Seneca show him offering advice and support to others. Many are addressed to a novice Stoic (Lucilius). Here Seneca is acting in a manner comparable to an individual therapist or life coach.
About six of Seneca’s letters fall under the heading of a genre known as consolatio or philosophical consolation literature. Typically these are letters addressed to individuals who are struggling following bereavement or some other misfortune. They provide a particularly clear example of the way in which Stoic philosophy was administered as a form of psychotherapeutic advice. Moreover, Epictetus described a Stoic called Paconius Agrippinus having written similar consolation letters to himself, in which he describes the potential opportunities or positives to be found in seemingly catastrophic situations such as illness or exile. This might be compared to the practice of writing “decatastrophizing scripts,” advocated by Beck in the treatment of certain forms of anxiety.
However, there’s also some indication that novice Stoics had individual tutors who administered Stoic therapy in person. For example, Marcus Aurelius mentions that his Stoic tutor Junius Rusticus persuaded him to undergo therapeia to improve his character. The early Greek Stoics actually wrote several books on psychological therapy which are sadly lost, such as the Therapeutics of Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school. However, we do have a surviving book called On the Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul’s Passions by Galen, Marcus Aurelius’ court physician. Galen wasn’t a Stoic, he was something of an eclectic. However, he’d studied Stoicism and this book appears to be influenced by earlier Stoic writings on psychotherapy. Galen notes that we tend to have a blind spot for our own errors and so he recommends obtaining the help of a wiser and more experienced mentor who can question us about our character and actions, perhaps the role that Rusticus played for Marcus Aurelius.
REBT and Stoicism
The extent of REBT’s indebtedness to ancient Stoicism, both in terms of theory and practice, has been the focus of two recent books (Robertson, 2010; Still & Dryden, 2012). As REBT is the form of psychotherapy most closely related to Stoicism, it’s worth highlighting some of the similarities between them:
As we’ve seen, REBT practitioners often orient clients to their role in therapy by teaching them the quotation from Epictetus above (“Men are disturbed not by things…”); this was a frequently-cited strategy in ancient Stoicism, which involved gaining cognitive distance by reminding ourselves that our distressing emotions are due primarily to our own beliefs.
Both REBT and Stoicism therefore agree that our emotions are primarily determined by our beliefs or thinking (cognition) and that beliefs and emotions may be two aspects of a single process rather than, as Plato believed, two fundamentally separate psychological processes.
REBT trains clients to closely monitor the relationship between their thoughts, actions, and feelings, when becoming upset, which is similar to the Stoic emphasis on continual attention (prosoche) to one’s faculty of judgment.
REBT’s main technique is the rational or “Socratic” disputation of irrational demands, sometimes referred to as the client’s underlying “philosophy” of life; this is comparable to the philosophical disputation of our fundamental value-judgments in Stoicism.
REBT’s central claim that irrational and absolutistic demands (rigid “must” statements) lie at the root of emotional disturbance resembles the Stoic emphasis on the centrality of irrational value-judgments concerning what is unconditionally “good” or “bad” in life.
REBT encourages a threefold attitude of tolerance, and acceptance of imperfections, toward oneself, other people, and the world, comparable to the threefold emphasis on accepting our own body, other people, and external events as “indifferent” in Stoicism.
Ellis’ notion that there are rational and healthy emotions, which we should aspire to cultivate instead of our irrational ones, clearly resembles the Stoic notion of “healthy passions” (eupatheiai).
REBT’s concept of replacing absolutistic demands with flexible “desires” or “preferences” resembles the Stoic concept of the “reserve clause,” which attributes “selective value” to external events, for the purpose of making plans, while accepting that they may not turn out as we would like — the Stoics likewise distinguish between light “preferences”, which adapt to setbacks, and rigid desires that are irrational, excessive, and of a demanding nature.
REBT’s opposition to “awfulizing,” or judging events to be absolutely catastrophic, resembles the Stoic opposition to judging external events to be unconditionally “bad” or “evil” in an irrational and excessive manner.
The main imagery-technique employed in REBT, called “Rational Emotive Imagery” (REI), clearly resembles the Stoic practice of praemeditatio malorum; both involve repeatedly picturing future setbacks or loss, as if happening now, in order to reduce anxiety and build psychological resilience to potentially stressful events.
Indeed, overall, Ellis described REBT as a “philosophical” approach to therapy, and its fundamental goal as “rational living,” which we might compare to the Stoic goal of living “in accord with reason,” or prudently and wisely (Diogenes Laertius, Lives, 7.86). By “inducing the patient to internalize a rational philosophy of life,” in other words, REBT aims to directly uproot and counteract the core irrational beliefs developed from childhood (Ellis, 1962, p. 65).
By direct statement and implication, then, modern thinkers are tending to recognize the fact that logic and reason can, and in a sense must, play a most important role in overcoming human neurosis. Eventually, they may be able to catch up with Epictetus in this respect, who wrote — some nineteen centuries ago — that “the chief concern of a wise and good man is his own reason.” (Ellis, 1962, p. 109)
Some of these parallels between REBT and Stoicism are probably due to the direct influence of Stoic writings read by Ellis on his thinking, some are perhaps more indirect, and some are probably due to Ellis and the Stoics arriving at similar conclusions on the basis of their shared premise that it’s not things that upset us but our beliefs about them.
Stoicism also influenced Beck and his colleagues, as we’ve seen, although in this case the influence appears to be mainly indirect through their exposure to Ellis’ writings on REBT. However, the distinction Beck makes between strategic (voluntary) and automatic thought processes in his revised cognitive model of anxiety happens to parallel a distinction the Stoics also made. They distinguished between judgements or opinions that are up to us (dogmata) and automatic thoughts or impressions that are not (phantasiai). The former we should learn how to change, as they’re potentially under our control, whereas the latter we should learn to accept with a relatively neutral or indifferent attitude.
Third Wave CBT
In some ways third-wave CBT actually has even more in common with Stoicism than Beck and Ellis, although there’s basically no longer any explicit reference to Stoicism, so the connection has now been lost, ironically just as Stoicism is going through a resurgence. It’s unfortunate that third-wave therapists turned predominantly to Buddhism as an inspiration for introducing mindfulness to CBT when similar ideas were already there in Stoicism. These were the main aspects of Stoicism ignored by Ellis, Beck, and other early cognitive therapists. The third-wave practitioners could just have looked deeper into Stoicism and found an ancient Western mindfulness-based psychotherapy.
The focus on values clarification and living in accord with our core values that’s found in approaches such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and Behavioral Activation (BA) has obvious parallels with ancient Stoicism. The Stoics made a fundamental distinction between the type of intrinsic value that belongs to our own character and voluntary actions, which they called virtue (arete), and the sort of extrinsic value that belongs to external events, including the outcomes of our actions, which they called selective “value” (axia).
The Stoics believed that we should accept that external outcomes are not entirely under our control and shift our focus more on to the intrinsic value of our own character traits, such as exercising greater kindness, friendship, and wisdom in life. They also construe this in terms of filling our various roles in life more admirably, insofar as this is within our sphere of control, such as being a good parent or teacher. The practice of questioning and clarifying our values is integral to the ancient Socratic method and Stoic philosophy as is the effort to live more consistently in accord with them, from moment to moment, throughout each day. The Stoics believed that this led to a greater sense of fulfilment in life, and personal flourishing, whereas over-attachment to external events and the outcome of our actions tended to lead to excessive desires and emotions, which damage our mental health.
With regard to mindfulness, the Stoics placed considerable emphasis on the practice of focusing attention on the present moment. The Stoics called this simply prosoche (“attention”), although modern Stoics tend to describe it as “Stoic mindfulness.” Whereas mindfulness practices derived from Buddhism sometimes entail greater attention to the body or breathing, though, Stoic mindfulness is focused specifically on the activity of our executive function ruling faculty (hegemonikon). For the Stoics, attention should be focused on the seat of our sphere of control: our voluntary cognitive activity in the present moment. The basic principle applied in Stoic mindfulness is then to distinguish clearly between our voluntary cognition (prohairesis) and automatic thoughts and impressions (phantasiai), taking more ownership for the former and adopting an attitude of greater detachment and indifference toward the latter. The Stoics also describe this process as the “separation” of our thoughts and beliefs from their objects as opposed to allowing them to blend or merge together — a strategy we might compare to “cognitive distancing” in Beck’s cognitive therapy or “cognitive defusion” ACT. For example, Epictetus taught his Stoic students that when a distressing thought pops into their mind they should speak to it (apostrophize) saying “You are just an impression and not at all the thing you claim to be.” Similar techniques involving talking to thoughts as if to another person are employed in ACT to aid defusion.
More detailed comparisons with third-wave approaches could be made. However, greater dialogue between Stoics and third-wave therapists is surely justified by the Stoic conceptions of value and mindfulness, and their emphasis on neutral acceptance of unpleasant feelings or events beyond our direct control. Over the past few decades a growing number of people have been drawn to Stoicism as a form of self-help as well as a philosophy of life capable of providing them with a sense of direction and purpose. People often report that they got into Stoicism because they see it as providing a Western alternative to Buddhism. It just happens that neither Ellis nor Beck presented it that way, so later generations of cognitive therapists looked elsewhere for inspiration when it came to mindfulness practices, and Stoicism was unjustly neglected.
Stoicism’s Benefits to CBT
Stoicism has things in common both with second and third wave approaches to CBT. Perhaps it can even help to unite practitioners of those approaches, expanding their common ground.
Moreover, some clients, and therapists, find Stoicism more congruent than Buddhism with their own cultural concepts and values. The classical nature of Stoic literature is also an important asset. For example, Seneca was one of the finest writers of antiquity. Many people therefore find these writings more meaningful, engaging, and memorable than modern self-help or therapeutic literature. People have quotes from Marcus Aurelius tattooed on their bodies — nobody has an Albert Ellis tattoo. These are very beautiful and profound writings, which contain teachings that people can identify with at a much deeper level, as a whole philosophy of life.
Although Stoicism was used as a therapy overall it has a more preventative orientation than CBT and in that respect it may hold promise as a form of training in emotional-resilience. CBT is a therapy; Stoicism is a philosophy of life. That does introduce limitations because some clients may disagree with the core concepts and values of Stoicism. That said, the values are not so far removed from some of the concepts relating to value taught in approaches such as ACT. Moreover, teaching clients about Stoicism is no more problematic in this regard than teaching them about Buddhism. However, there are clearly already many individuals who find Stoicism appealing as a philosophy, and broadly agree with its ethical values. The very fact that Stoicism is bigger and deeper than CBT in its aim to provide a philosophy of life perhaps gives us reason to believe that its benefits may be more lasting than those of existing CBT-based resilience training programs. People who study Stoicism embrace it as part of their life rather than viewing it merely as a set of coping techniques, which they might later forget if they don’t repeat their initial training. 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.
References
Robertson, D. ‘Stoic influences on modern psychotherapy’ in The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition, edited by John Sellars.
Baudouin, C. & Lestchinsky, A., 1924. The Inner Discipline. London: George Allen & Unwin.
Beck, A. T., 1976. Cognitive Therapy & Emotional Disorders. New York: International University Press.
Beck, A. T. & Alford, B. A., 2009. Depression: Causes and Treatment. Second ed. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press.
Beck, A. T., Emery, G. & Greenberg, R., 2005. Anxiety Disorders and Phobias: A Cognitive Perspective (20th Anniversary Edition). Cambridge, MA: Basic Books.
Beck, A. T., Rush, A. J., Shaw, B. F. & Emery, G., 1979. Cognitive Therapy of Depression. New York: Guilford Press.
Dryden, W. & Ellis, A., 2001. Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. In: K. Dobson, ed. Handbook of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies. New York: Guilford.
Dubois, P., 1904. The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders: The Psychoneuroses & their Moral Treatment. New York: Funnk and Wagnall.
Dubois, P., 1909. Self-Control and How to Secure It. New York: Funk and Wagnalls.
Dubois, P. & Gallatin, L., 1908. The Influence of the Mind on the Body. New York: Funk and Wagnalls.
Ellis, A., 1962. Reason & Emotion in Psychotherapy. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel.
Ellis, A., 2004. The Road to Tolerance: The Philosophy of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. New York: Prometheus Books.
Ellis, A. & Harper, R. A., 1997. A Guide to Rational Living. Third Revised ed. Chatsworth, CA: Wilshire.
Ellis, A. & MacLaren, C., 2005. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: A Therapist’s Guide. Second ed. Atascadero, CA: Impact.
Epictetus, 1995. The Discourses, The Handbook, Fragments. London: Everyman.
Hayes, S. C., Follette, V. M. & Linehan, M. M. eds., 2004. Mindfulness and Acceptance: Expanding the Cognitive-Behavioral Tradition. New York: Guildford Press.
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D. & Wilson, K. G., 2012. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: The Process and Practice of Mindful Change. Second ed. New York: Guilford.
Long, A., 2002. Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pietsch, W. V., 1990. The Serenity Prayer Book. New York: Harper Collins.
Reivich, K. & Shatté, A., 2002. The Resilience Factor. New York: Three Rivers.
Robertson, D. J., 2005. Stoicism: A Lurking Presence. Counselling & Psychotherapy Journal (CPJ), July.
Robertson, D. J., 2010. The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT): Stoic Philosophy as Rational & Cognitive Psychotherapy. London: Karnac.
Robertson, D. J., 2012. Build your Resilience. London: Hodder.
Robertson, D. J., 2013. Teach Yourself Stoicism and the Art of Happiness. London: Hodder.
Robertson, D.J., 2019. How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. New York: St. Martin’s.
Still, A. & Dryden, W., 1999. The Place of Rationality in Stoicism and REBT. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 17(3), pp. 143–164.
Still, A. & Dryden, W., 2012. The Historical and Philosophical Context of Rational Psychotherapy: The Legacy of Epictetus. London: Karnac.
Republished by kind permission of The Behavior Therapist from vol. 42, no. 2, available as PDF download from the website of ABCT.
I said I’d upload a video of myself reading the final chapter from How to Think Like a Roman Emperor when we reached 500 reviews on Goodreads. So here it is…
When we reach 100 reviews on Amazon US, I’m going to release a new poster from by forthcoming graphic novel about Marcus Aurelius.
Let these doctrines, if that is what they are, be enough for you. As for your thirst for books, be done with it, so that you may not die with complaints on your lips, but with a truly cheerful mind and grateful to the gods with all your heart. — Meditations, 2.3
The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, like other Stoics, believed that it was more important to apply philosophy in practice, throughout our daily lives, than simply to read about it in books. However, he also owned a copy of the Discourses of Epictetus, gifted to him by his Stoic mentor Junius Rusticus, which he quotes repeatedly and had clearly studied very closely indeed.
The philosopher Seneca explains the Stoic attitude toward reading as being more about quality than quantity:
Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner. — Letters to Lucilius, 2
When Jeff Beck sang “You’re everywhere and nowhere, baby”, in Hi Ho Silver Lining, he could have been quoting Seneca.
The Stoic advises his friend Lucilius that people who constantly change the medicine they’re taking get little benefit. We should identify the most valuable books and study them very closely, reading them repeatedly, rather than behaving like a dilettante and dipping first into one book and then another without allowing ourselves the time to properly digest any of the ideas they contain, let alone put them into practice.
Below I’ve listed the most important books on Stoicism, at least as far as I’m concerned. (I’ve grouped them under three main headings, by author, although you’ll notice that I’ve sneakily mentioned more than one text in some cases.) If you’re interested in Stoicism you should probably read these over and over again until you know many of the passages by heart.
Some of you will already have read these books so I wanted to add some anecdotes about the historical context in which they were written. That’s the approach I adopted when writing my latest book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. I repeatedly found over the years, running courses and workshops on Stoicism, that people tended to get roughly twice as much out of these books if they read them closely and understand more about the author and their times.
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
This is the first book most people read on Stoicism. It consists of the personal notes or journal kept by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. From two brief remarks in the text, and some other minor clues, it appears he probably wrote most or all of the text toward the middle or end of the First Marcomannic War, probably sometime between 170 and 175 AD. (For instance, The Meditations mentions the death of his adoptive brother, Lucius, which was in 169 AD, but not to that of Marcus’ wife, Faustina, who passed in 176 AD.)
After the untimely death of his brother and co-emperor, Lucius Verus, Marcus, apparently with no military training or experience whatsoever, donned the general’s cape and boots and rode out to take sole command of the largest army ever massed on a Roman frontier — numbering some 140,000 men in total.
Following the Parthian War a devastating disease, known as the Antonine Plague, swept through the empire, particularly the legionary camps, leaving Rome highly vulnerable. Ballomar, the young king of the Marcomanni, seized his opportunity to spring a surprise attack and, in breach of existing peace treaties, led a huge coalition of hostile barbarian tribes across the River Danube, overrunning the northern provinces of the empire. The Marcomanni and their allies proceeded to loot and pillage their way across the Alps and finally laid siege to the prosperous Italian city of Aquileia, bringing war to the very doorstep of Rome herself, and throwing the city into panic.
After driving the enemy out of Italy and liberating the northern provinces, for much of the ensuing war, Marcus stationed himself at the front line, in the Roman legionary fortress of Carnuntum, beside the Danube. It was in the crucible of this gruelling war that The Meditations took shape. My belief is that Marcus may have been inspired to begin writing down his personal reflections on applying philosophy in daily life following the death of his beloved Stoic tutor, Junius Rusticus, around 170 AD — possibly another victim of the plague. Deprived of his closest friend and mentor, Marcus became his own Stoic therapist, as it were, and worked through his emotions by writing short reflections, some of which were probably fragments of remembered conversations with his Stoic teachers.
In one of the most famous passages of The Meditations, which opens the main part of the book, Marcus reminds himself to prepare each morning to face dishonesty and treachery. The manuscript of The Meditations originally bore the title To Himself and this, the main part of the text, opens with the words “Say to yourself…”
Say to yourself at the start of the day, I shall meet with meddling, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, and unsociable people. They are subject to all these defects because they have no knowledge of good and bad. But I, who have observed the nature of the good, and seen that it is the right; and of the bad, and seen that it is the wrong; and of the wrongdoer himself, and seen that his nature is akin to my own — not because he is of the same blood and seed, but because he shares as I do in mind and thus in a portion of the divine — I, then, can neither be harmed by these people, nor become angry with one who is akin to me, nor can I hate him, for we have come into being to work together, like feet, hands, eyelids, or the two rows of teeth in our upper and lower jaws. To work against one another is therefore contrary to nature; and to be angry with another person and turn away from him is surely to work against him. — Meditations, 2.1
Most people assume he’s talking about petty matters but Marcus also faced some massive, historic, acts of betrayal, such as the conspiracy leading to the Marcomanni invasion described above. This passage seems all the more remarkable, doesn’t it, if we stop to consider whether this was how Marcus looked upon the enemy tribes he was waging war against?
The Meditations is a very easy book to read but in my experience people do obtain much more from it when they study the text more closely, and learn a little more about the historical and philosophical context in which it was written. That’s why I wanted to write a book about Marcus Aurelius that linked the inner story of his life, as a philosopher, as found in The Meditations, with the stories of his outer life, as Roman emperor, as told in several Roman histories of his reign, and a few other ancient sources that we still have today.
The Handbook and Discourses of Epictetus
The next book about Stoicism that most people should read is The Handbook or Enchiridion of Epictetus, which is actually a series of fifty three sayings and short passages based on The Discourses, compiled and edited by his student Arrian, a highly-accomplished Roman statesman and general. It’s an obvious choice because it’s short and easy to read. It was specifically designed by Arrian to provide a simple, practical introduction to Stoicism, almost like a bullet-point summary of the much longer Discourses.
Marcus Aurelius also quotes repeatedly from The Discourses and he seems to be mainly following Epictetus’ brand of Stoicism. So if you like The Meditations, you’ll almost certainly like The Handbook as well. And if you like The Handbook, you’ll probably like the longer and more discursive version of the same ideas found in The Discourses.
According to some ancient sources there were originally eight volumes of The Discourse of Epictetus. Unfortunately, only four actually survive today. Intriguingly, though, Marcus Aurelius says that he was given a copy of notes from the lectures of Epictetus by his tutor Junius Rusticus. (Marcus was a young boy when Epictetus died and they’d almost certainly never met in person.) As Marcus later quotes from the surviving Discourses we can be fairly certain those are the notes to which he’s referring. However, he also quotes otherwise unknown sayings of Epictetus, which suggests he’d perhaps also read the four lost volumes of The Discourses. In fact, for all we know some of the other passages scattered throughout The Meditations could be quotes or paraphrases from these missing books of Epictetus.
The most famous passage in The Handbook says that it’s not things that upset us but our judgments or opinions about them. Although this became to be seen as a typically Stoic idea, it can actually be traced back to Socrates, the philosopher whom the Stoics most admired and sought to emulate. Indeed, Epictetus hints at this by immediately bringing in Socrates as an example:
Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things: for example, death is nothing terrible, for if it were, it would have seemed so to Socrates; for the opinion about death, that it is terrible, is the terrible thing. — Handbook, 5
The first part of that quote encapsulates what psychologists now call the “cognitive theory of emotion”. (It’s our thoughts and beliefs, aka “cognitions”, that largely determine our emotions.) It was adopted by Albert Ellis, one of the pioneers of cognitive therapy, in the 1950s, who taught it to most of his clients in their initial session. Hence, it became well-known, almost a cliche, to subsequent generations of cognitive-behavioural therapists.
The second most famous passage from The Handbook is its very first sentence: “Some things are up to us whereas other things are not” (Handbook, 1). There’s clearly a good reason why Arrian chose that as the opening sentence: it’s the foundation of everything that follows. The Stoics believed that we need to train ourselves throughout life to carefully distinguish between things that are directly under our control and everything else.
This concept also became famous through The Serenity Prayer, popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” Today Stoics tend to call this idea the “Dichotomy of Control”, and I also tend to describe it as the “Stoic Fork” because it involves making a sharp distinction between two domains in life: what we do and what merely happens to us.
Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius
Seneca came from the generation before Epictetus. Curiously, neither Marcus nor Epictetus mention him. That appears to be partly because of a convention whereby Romans writing in Greek (like Marcus and Epictetus) didn’t tend to cite Latin authors. However, there may be another explanation.
Seneca was rhetoric teacher to the young Emperor Nero and later became his speechwriter and political advisor. It might even be reasonable to refer to him as a professional Sophist, rather than a philosopher. Despite Seneca’s guidance, in adulthood Nero quickly degenerated into a violent despot and began murdering his own family members, and persecuting his opponents. At first Seneca continued to support him, often seeming to apologize for and defend his behaviour. However, later he withdrew from public life and eventually Nero had him executed on a seemingly trumped up conspiracy charge.
I said that Marcus doesn’t mention Seneca in Greek but we also have a surviving cache of letters between Marcus and his Latin rhetoric tutor, Fronto. In these, Fronto several times mentions Seneca, in a manner that seems rather derisive. At one point he even goes so far as to warn Marcus that looking for pearls of philosophical wisdom in the writings of Seneca is like grubbing around in the bottom of a sewer just to retrieve a few silver coins.
We don’t really see much of Marcus’ response to this. My guess is that they may have been talking about political speeches by Seneca rather than the philosophical letters he’s best known for today. We get a glimpse of what these may have been like in texts such as On Clemency, where Seneca awkwardly defends Nero, portraying him as a virtual philosopher-king without a drop of blood on his hands, etc. — a claim that would have been laughable to the Senate. By contrast, Epictetus warns his students against flattering tyrants. He had originally been a slave owned by one of Nero’s secretaries and probably witnessed first-hand some of the intrigue and chaos surrounding the imperial court at this time.
During Nero’s reign a group of politicians known as the “Stoic Opposition” adopted a principled stance against him, led by Thrasea, a close friend of the famous Stoic teacher Musonius Rufus, whose student Epictetus would later become. These men criticized Nero more openly than Seneca dared. When Nero sent the Senate a letter trying to excuse the murder of his own mother by claiming that she had been discovered plotting against him and had committed suicide Thrasea silently walked out of the meeting. These acts of peaceful protest undoubtedly provoked Nero’s wrath.
And indeed this was always his way of acting on other occasions. He used to say, for example:
If I were the only one that Nero was going to put to death, I could easily pardon the rest who load him with flatteries. But since even among those who praise him to excess there are many whom he has either already disposed of or will yet destroy, why should one degrade oneself to no purpose and then perish like a slave, when one may pay the debt to nature like a freeman? As for me, men will talk of me hereafter, but of them never, except only to record the fact that they were put to death. — Cassius Dio
I think Thrasea was talking about Seneca here, among others, and that may explain why later generations of Stoics don’t mention his name. Epictetus and Marcus, on the other hand, both heap praise on members of the Stoic Opposition. Indeed, The Handbook concludes with a quote attributed to Socrates which says “Anytus and Meletus can kill me but they cannot harm me”, referring to the two key individuals who brought the charges leading to his execution. (It’s perhaps a paraphrase from Plato’s Apology.) However, Epictetus’ students must have recognized that as a tribute to Thrasea because Cassius Dio tells us that he was famous for applying the same saying to Nero: “Such was the man that Thrasea showed himself to be; and he was always saying to himself: ‘Nero can kill me, but he cannot harm me.’”
Despite his murky political leanings, though, and pace Fronto, Seneca’s philosophical writings do contain a great deal of valuable Stoic wisdom. The Letters to Lucilius, of which there are 124, are the most common place for people to start. They’re beautifully written and provide an excellent introduction to Stoicism as a philosophy of life. They read more like essays and so in some ways they’re more accessible than either the discourses of Epictetus or notes of Marcus Aurelius
If you like those, you should read Seneca’s other letters and essays, perhaps starting with the consolation letters to Marcia, Helvia, and Polybius. These are important examples of the consolatio genre in philosophical literature, in which philosophical advice is given to a friend in order to help them assuage emotional suffering. They illustrate, in other words, a form of Stoic psychotherapy or counselling. Epictetus mentions that one of his heroes, a member of the Stoic Opposition called Paconius Agrippinus, used to write letters of this kind addressed to himself when faced with some personal catastrophe. In some respects, we can also see The Meditations (“To Himself”) of Marcus Aurelius as resembling a consolation letter addressed to himself, although written in the form of fragmentary passages rather than continuous prose.
Modern introductions to Stoic philosophy as a way of life
Modern introductions to Stoic philosophy as a way of life
According to Amazon.com, these are the five bestselling books on modern Stoicism. They’re all popular introductory texts rather than academic ones. I’ve not included the ancient primary sources, the most widely-read of which are The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, The Moral Letters (to Lucilius) of Seneca, and The Discourses and Handbook of Epictetus.
I usually suggest reading The Meditations first and then the Handbook of Epictetus. However, if you want to learn about modern Stoicism, apart from reading the classics, I’d recommend taking a look at all five of the titles below.
This is certainly the most popular book currently available on Stoicism. It consists of short daily readings, which can be studied over the course of a year.
Hanselman has provided many original translations of ancient Stoic sources, including some lesser known ones. There are several gems from the Stoic sayings of Zeno, and from the often-overlooked plays of Seneca.Holiday provides daily reflections and commentary on the passages quoted.
Each month is assigned a different theme, with daily readings on its different aspects. It also serves therefore as a convenient introduction to some of the most important passages in the ancient Stoic writings themselves, as well as provide a resource for modern day practice and contemplation. There’s also a popular Daily Stoic Journal, companion text. The Daily Stoic on Amazon
This was my own fourth book on Stoicism. It tells the story of Emperor Marcus Aurelius’ life, drawing on the surviving Roman histories of his reign, interweaving anecdotes about his life with examples of his use of Stoic philosophy as a way of coping with various emotional challenges.
These include conquering bad habits and unhealthy desires, coping with pain and illness, managing anger, overcoming fear, and dealing with loss and the consciousness of our own mortality — each the topic of a separate chapter in the book.
I also drew on my background as a cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist to explore how ancient Stoic techniques could be used today in a manner informed by modern scientific research in the field of psychology and clinical practices in psychotherapy. How to Think Like a Roman Emperor on Amazon
This beautifully written book contains another collection of excerpts from the writings of ancient Stoics, focused on different areas of life, with commentary from the author.
The content consists of quotations from various relevant authors — from Epictetus and Cicero to Montaigne and Schopenhauer. Some of these were taken from existing translations and some are new. They’re organized thematically in chapters about the topics of judgement, externals, perspective, death, desire, wealth and pleasure, what others think, valuation, emotion, adversity, virtue, and learning.
It concludes with a chapter called Stoicism and its critics which addresses common criticisms and misconceptions of Stoicism, such as the idea that Stoics are cold-hearted, unemotional, or lacking compassion. The Practicing Stoic on Amazon
This is perhaps the first major bestselling book on Stoicism in daily life. It’s written in a very readable and accessible style and has many good ideas and interesting personal observations.
Irvine does reject some of the fundamental principles of ancient Stoicism, so it’s not really a guide to the original philosophy. “The resulting version of Stoicism,” he writes, “is in various respects unlike the Stoicism one would have been taught to practice in an ancient Stoic school.”
Nevertheless, the book contains advice on psychological techniques derived from, if not identical to, the teachings of ancient Stoicism. These include: negative visualization, the dichotomy of control, Stoic fatalism, self-denial, and meditation. It’s an easy book to read and contains many examples of Stoicism applied to everyday life. A Guide to the Good Life on Amazon
This book recounts Pigliucci’s initial introduction to Stoicism and his experiments embracing it as a personal philosophy of life.
Pigliucci takes Epictetus as his guide and his account of applying Stoicism in daily life is structured around the threefold distinction between the Discipline of Desire, Discipline of Action and Discipline of Assent found in The Discourses. It contains down-to-earth anecdotes about Pigliucci’s use of Stoicism to cope with various emotionally challenging situations that he faced.
The book concludes with a chapter describing a dozen Stoic psychological exercises, which will be of considerable practical value to most readers. How to be a Stoic on Amazon
I’d also like to mention Ryan Holiday’s bestselling trilogy of books: The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy and Stillness is the Key. These are also excellent modern introductions. The author describes them, though, as books influenced by Stoicism rather than ones about Stoicism. The Daily Stoic is Holiday’s book focused on the philosophy of Stoicism itself.
Attention (prosochê) is the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude. It is a continuous vigilance and presence of mind, self-consciousness which never sleeps, and a constant tension of the spirit. Thanks to this attitude, the philosopher is fully aware of what he does at each instant, and he wills his actions fully. (Hadot, 1995, p. 84)
Ancient Stoic philosophy contains a bewildering array of psychological practices. In my first book on the subject, The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (2010), I tried to provide an overview of them and counted about eighteen altogether. I’ve often asked myself, though, which is the most fundamental psychological technique of Stoicism — the one that people should focus on learning first.
There are certainly different ways of approaching this question. However, one obvious answer comes from looking at the famous Handbook (Encheiridion) of Epictetus. The opening sentence says: “Some things are up to us and other things are not.” Modern Stoics call this “The Dichotomy of Control” and it can reasonably be said that this premise is the psychological foundation upon which the rest of the Handbook builds. The Earl of Shaftesbury, an early modern scholar of Stoicism, called it the “sovereign precept” of Stoicism.
In his discourse On Attention, Epictetus elevates this precept to a daily practice of continual Stoic mindfulness. The Greek word used here for “attention” is prosochê (προσοχή). In modern Greece it’s often used on warning signs where in English we might write “Caution!” or “Beware!” — pay attention, in other words. Epictetus, though, appears to be specifically describing attention to our ruling faculty (hegemonikon), i.e., our use of value judgements. The most important criterion to which Stoics must pay attention when making value judgements is that only what is up to us, our own volition, can be truly good or bad — everything else is (ultimately) indifferent.
Epictetus on Losing Attention
Epictetus begins by warning his students that when they have allowed their attention to lapse in this regard, they cannot simply recover it whenever they choose to do so. They should bear in mind that by failing to pay attention today to the most important things, our lives will be worse tomorrow. What causes most trouble in life is getting into the habit of not paying attention to our ruling faculty at certain times, which further leads to the habit of postponing paying attention at other times, and so on. Epictetus warns his student that to postpone paying attention in this way is to postpone the fundamental goal of life — which Stoics call “living in agreement with Nature”. It also means we’re putting off engaging in proper conduct, and achieving our own true fulfilment and flourishing as human beings (eudaimonia).
Epictetus’ students appear to have felt that it might be in their interests sometimes to delay making the effort to pay attention in this regard. They say they lose themselves in play or singing and become forgetful of how they’re using their ruling faculty to make value judgements. Epictetus argues that if it were good for them to abandon paying attention sometimes it would surely be even more beneficial to stop doing so completely. However, if it’s not generally profitable to let our attention wander, he asks, why not maintain it constantly? Epictetus tells his students that they could have played or sang while continuing to pay attention to their own ruling faculties.
Is there any part of life to which attention does not extend? Will you do anything in life worse by using attention and better by not attending at all? And what things in life are done better by those who do not do them with attention? Does he who works in wood work better by not paying attention? Does the captain of a ship manage it better by not attending?
When we have let our mind loose, he says, by allowing our attention to lapse, we no longer have the power to recall it to reason whenever we choose but rather we allow ourselves to be driven by our instincts.
The famous Daoist scripture Dao de Jing said that the wise man is “cautious like someone crossing a wintry stream”. Epictetus likewise says in the Encheiridion that just as someone walks very cautiously when he has to take care not to step on a sharp object or sprain his foot, the Stoic is always mindful, in his every act, not to harm the ruling faculty of his own mind by lapsing into folly or vice. Epictetus’ own Stoic teacher, Musonius Rufus, likewise said very bluntly that we should never relax our attention because “to let one’s mind go lax is, in effect, to lose it” (Sayings, 52). To abandon mindfulness is, in a sense, to become mindless.
Attention to What?
To what should Stoics pay attention, he asks his students. First and foremost, to the general principles of their philosophy, which they should have ready-to-hand at all times — neither falling asleep, awakening in the morning, eating, drinking, nor conversing with other people without having these basic precepts in mind. In particular, he says that we should continually pay attention to the fact that “no man is master of another man’s will, but that in the will alone is the good and the bad.” In other words, Stoics should be continually mindful of the fact that other people’s actions, or opinions, are ultimately indifferent to them, because all that matters is that their own mind is in agreement with Nature, by which the Stoics mean that they’re living in accord with reason and virtue. As long as I pay attention to this basic realization, I have no cause to be disturbed by external events. As Epictetus says elsewhere, “It’s not events that upset us but our judgements about them” (Encheiridion, 5).
He gives his students a simple example. Suppose that I get the impression that another person isn’t very pleased with me — he’s annoyed with me. The Stoic, paying continual attention to his own ruling faculty, should ask himself: “Is his opinion up to me then?” No, it’s not. My opinion of him is up to me, however, and I should remember to take full responsibility for how I choose to view things. Why should I be disturbed therefore as long as I remember to pay attention to the fact that his opinions aren’t truly up to me? Epictetus actually says his students should only be concerned how God (Zeus) might judge them or perhaps those who are “close to him”, i.e., the wise.
When we firmly grasp that some conclusion necessarily follows logically from a premise, we don’t care for any man who says the opposite. Seeing plainly that 1+1=2, we ignore any fool who tries to convince us otherwise. Why then, asks Epictetus, do we allow ourselves to become upset by those who blame us, and swayed by their opinions of us. Rather we should firmly grasp the fact that virtue is the only true good, which means that other people’s opinions of us — whether they praise or censure — are ultimately indifferent to us. The majority of people don’t know right from wrong, so we should be as indifferent to their opinions as a shoemaker would be to the advice of someone who knows nothing about making shoes. We shouldn’t, in other words, be easily swayed by praise or blame coming from ignorant people with regard to the most important things in life. We have to depend upon our own judgement and that requires unwavering attention to the use we make of it.
Wisdom and Justice
We should therefore always have these basic rules of Stoicism ready-to-hand, paying attention to them continually, and training ourselves to undertake every daily task in this manner. Our mind should be kept focused on the fundamental goal of “living in agreement with Nature”, which means “pursuing nothing external, and nothing which is up to others.” Rather we should pursue our own flourishing, first and foremost, by remembering that we are rational beings, and aiming to live with wisdom.
We can deal in external things (“preferred indifferents”), to some extent, but only insofar as it is reasonable to do so, without becoming emotionally attached to them. Elsewhere Epictetus compares this to players in a game throwing a ball to one another and catching it. Virtue consists in handling externals in the same sportsmanlike way, being willing to catch the ball when it’s thrown and to throw it to another when it’s appropriate to do so.
We should also remember therefore that we are social beings, and what our duties are with regard to other people, both as individuals and communities. Applying moral wisdom to our relationships constitutes the Stoic virtue of justice. We must discern when it is appropriate to play or sing, Epictetus says, and in whose presence, and what the likely consequences of doing so will be.
We must continually pay attention, however, so that we can interact with other people, in our various social roles, without compromising our own moral character and damaging our fundamental wellbeing. We must realize that true harm comes to us, says Epictetus, not from anything external but from our own thoughts and actions. As the Stoics repeatedly like to say, passions such as excessive fear and anger do us more harm than the things we’re upset about.
Conclusion: Nobody is Perfect
Epictetus concludes by reassuring his students: the Stoics concede that nobody is perfect. It’s impossible, even through continual attention, to free our minds completely from vices and passions. Nevertheless, it is within our power to direct our efforts to being perfect. That’s the connotation of the very word “philosopher”, which literally means “love of wisdom”. No man can claim to be perfectly wise but we should nevertheless all aspire to become so — we should all love wisdom. We should be content, says Epictetus, if by continual attention, and the continual desire to live wisely, we at least escape a handful of errors — because we’re talking about the most important errors in life.
When you say that “tomorrow I will begin to pay attention” (to reason and the fundamental goal of life) you should always remember that you are implicitly saying that today you will let yourself be irrational, shameless, and vicious. Today, asks Epictetus, will you then be passionate and envious, and needlessly allow others to cause you pain? “If it is good to pay attention tomorrow,” he says, “how much better is it to do so today?” And because we are creatures of habit, tomorrow it will become easier to pay attention appropriately if I have already done so today.
This is a slightly revised version of a script that I wrote many years ago, which was published in my first book on Stoicism and psychotherapy, The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy in 2010 — a revised 2nd edition of which is due for publication in 2019.
Take a moment to settle into your posture and make yourself comfortable… Close your eyes and relax… [Pause.] Be aware of your breathing… Notice the rhythm of the breath… Do nothing for a while, just be content to contemplate your breathing more deeply… [Pause.] Now, begin by paying attention to the whole of your body as one… From the top of your head, all the way down into your fingers and down into your toes… Be aware of your body as one… every nerve, muscle and fibre… Don’t try to change anything. Don’t try to stop anything from changing… Some things can change just by being observed…
Be content to notice whatever you notice, and feel whatever you feel… Be a passive, detached observer… As you continue to relax, turn your attention deeper within… Become more aware of your body… and imagine how you would appear right now if you could just take a step back and look at yourself… Begin to picture yourself as if seen from the outside… It really doesn’t matter how vividly you can see yourself, it’s just the intention — the idea — that matters. Imagine your body posture… your facial expression… the colour and style of your clothing…
Now keep looking at the image of yourself resting there, and imagine leaving the ground as you gaze down at your body. You begin floating serenely upwards, slowly and continuously, rising upwards. All the while your gaze keeps returning to your body, which remains there below you as you rise above it. Keep looking down toward your body as you float higher and higher…. The roof and ceiling disappear, allowing you to float freely upward. Looking down you see yourself relaxing comfortably below in the building… You appear contemplative and contented. You can see all the rooms, and any other people around you.
As you continue to float gently higher and higher, your perspective widens more and more until you see the whole surrounding area. You see all the buildings nearby from above. You see the people in buildings and in the streets and roads. You observe people far below working, or walking along the pavement, people cycling or driving their cars, and those travelling on buses and trains. You begin to contemplate the whole network of human lives and how people everywhere are interacting with each other, influencing each other, encountering each other in different ways…
Floating higher, people become as small as ants below. Rising up into the clouds, you see the whole of the surrounding region beneath you. You see both towns and countryside, and eventually the coastline begins coming into view as your perspective becomes more and more expansive… You float gently up above the clouds and through the upper atmosphere of the planet Earth… So high that you eventually rise beyond the sphere of the planet itself, and into outer space… You look toward planet Earth and see it suspended in space before you, silently turning… resplendent in all its majesty and beauty…
You see the whole planet… the blue of the great oceans… and the brown and green of the continental land masses… You see the white of the polar ice caps, north and south… You see the grey wisps of cloud that pass silently across the surface of the Earth… Though you can no longer see yourself from so far above, you know and feel that you are down there on Earth below, and that your life is important, and what you do with your life is important. Your change in perspective may even begin to change your view of things, your values and priorities…
You contemplate all the countless living beings upon the Earth. The population of the planet is over seven billion people… You realise that your life is one among many, one person among the whole human race… You think of the rich diversity of human life on Earth. The many languages spoken by people of different races, in different countries… people of all different ages… newborn infants, elderly people, people in the prime of life… You think of the enormous variety of human experiences… some individuals right now are unhappy whereas some are happy… and you realise how richly varied the tapestry of human life before you actually is.
And yet as you gaze upon the planet Earth you are also aware of its position within the rest of the universe… a tiny speck of stardust, adrift in the immeasurable vastness of cosmic space… This world of ours is merely a single planet, a tiny grain of sand by comparison with the endless tracts of cosmic space… a tiny rock in space, revolving around our Sun… the Sun itself just one of countless billions of stars which punctuate the velvet blackness of our galaxy…
You think about the present moment on Earth and see it within the broader context of your life as a whole. You think of your lifespan in its totality… You think of your own life as one moment in the enormous lifespan of mankind… Hundreds of generations have lived and died before you… many more will live and die in the future, long after you yourself are gone… Civilisations too have a lifespan; you think of the many great cities which have arisen and been destroyed throughout the ages… and your own civilisation as one in a series… perhaps in the future to be followed by new cities, peoples, languages, cultures, and ways of life…
You think of the lifespan of humanity itself… Just one of countless billions of species living on the planet… Mankind arose roughly two hundred thousand years ago… animal life itself first appeared on Earth over four billion years ago… Contemplate time as follows… Realise that if the history of life on Earth filled an encyclopaedia a thousand pages long… the life of the entire human race could be represented by a single sentence somewhere in that book… just one sentence…
And now think of the lifespan of the planet itself… Countless billions of years old… the life of the planet Earth too has a beginning, middle, and end… Formed from the debris of an exploding star, unimaginably long ago… one day in the distant future its destiny is to be swallowed up and consumed by the fires of our own Sun… You think of the great lifespan of the universe itself… the almost incomprehensible vastness of universal time… starting with a cosmic explosion, a big bang, immeasurable ages ago in the past… Perhaps one day, at the end of time, this whole universe will implode on itself and disappear once again…
Contemplating the vast lifespan of the universe, remember that the present moment is but the briefest of instants… the mere blink of an eye… the turn of a screw… a fleeting second in the mighty river of cosmic time… Yet the “here and now” is important… standing at the centre point of all human experience… Here and now you find yourself in the midst of living time… Though your body may be small in the grand scheme of things, your imagination, the human imagination, is as big as the universe… bigger than the universe… enveloping everything that can be conceived…
You contemplate all things, past, present and future… You see your life within the bigger picture… the total context of cosmic time and space… You see yourself as an integral part of something much bigger, something truly vast, the “All” itself… Just as the cells of your own body work together to form a greater unity, a living being, so your body as a whole is like a single cell in the organism of the universe… Along with every atom in the universe you necessarily contribute your role to the unfolding of its grand design…
As your consciousness expands, and your mind stretches out to reach the vastness of eternity… Things change greatly in perspective… and shifts occur in their relative importance… Trivial things seem trivial to you… Indifferent things seem indifferent… The significance of your own attitude toward life becomes more and more apparent… you realise that life is what you make of it… You learn to put things in perspective, and focus on your true values and priorities in life… One stage at a time, you develop the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference… You follow nature… your own true nature as a rational, truth-seeking human being… and the one great Nature of the universe as a whole…
Now in a moment you are going to begin sinking back down to Earth, toward your place in the here and now… Part of you can always remain aware of the view from above, though… Whenever you like, you can return to and remember that perspective and the feeling of serenity it brings…
Now you begin your descent back down to Earth, to face the future with greater confidence and equanimity… You sink back down through the sky… down… down… down… toward the local area… down… down… down… into this building… down… down… down… You sink back gently into your body… all the way now… as your feet slowly come to rest upon the floor once again…
Now think about the room around you… Think about action… movement… think about looking around and getting your orientation… raising your head a little… Begin to breathe a little bit more deeply… a little bit more energetically… let your body feel more alive and ready for action… breathe energy and vitality into your body… breathe a little deeper and deeper again… until you’re ready to take a deep breath, open your eyes, and emerge from meditation… taking your mindfulness and self-awareness forward into life… beginning now… take a deep breath… and open your eyes now… when you’re ready… entering the here and now with deep calm and serenity…
