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Books Marcus Aurelius Stoicism Uncategorized

The Title of How to Think Like a Roman Emperor

I’ve told this story so many times now that I thought I might as well just do a quick blog post about it…

In 2013, I was interviewed by Carrie Sheffield for an article about Stoicism in Forbes magazine:

Robertson, a Scottish-born therapist and classics enthusiast, led workshops on psychological resilience for managers at oil giant Shell called “How to think like a Roman Emperor,” based on the life of stoic philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius.

I’d been asked to deliver some workshops for STASCO, Shell Trading and Shipping, back in 2006, which talked about Stoicism and stress management. I wanted to make it attention-grabbing so I called it How to Think Like a Roman Emperor, which seemed to go down well with the audience.

A few years later, around 2008, I was invited to submit a proposal for a book on psychotherapy for a panel organized by the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) in conjunction with the publisher Karnac. I sent them a proposal for a book called How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. The UKCP panel rejected it, though, because they didn’t like the title (or the subject matter).

The acquisitions editor, liked the proposal, though, and suggested I forward it directly to Karnac, which I did. They rejected it as well. So I got in touch and asked them if there was something else they’d prefer instead: “What sort of books do you want?” They said they’d like to publish a book by the title The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy. So that’s how my first real book was published. (I’m about to begin work on a revised second edition, for the publisher Routledge, who now own the rights.)

However, I kept thinking about that title: How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. It just seemed to stick in my mind for some reason. So when I had an opportunity to develop a proposal for a new book on Stoicism, about a decade later, I thought I’d try again. This time my publisher, St. Martins Press, were persuaded to give it a go. Well, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor is now available from all good bookstores, and some bad ones, as the saying goes. It’s doing very well. Today we had a favourable review in The Wall Street journal.

Mr. Robertson […] displays a sound knowledge of Marcus’ life and thought. The author’s accessible prose style, well-suited for recounting both philosophical concepts and arcane Roman history, contributes to its appeal. As an introduction to Stoic philosophy, it’s hard to beat the “Meditations,” which deserve to be read ahead of any commentary on them. That said, Mr. Robertson’s book succeeds on its own terms, presenting a convincing case for the continuing relevance of an archetypal philosopher-king.

So the moral of the story? Well as a kid growing up in Scotland, of course, I had the story of Robert the Bruce drummed into my from an early age. The Bruce had been sorely defeated by the English army in battle and was hiding in a cave to avoid capture.

Depressed and alone he gazed at a spider climbing the wall. Over and over again, as it tried to spin its web, it was blown down by a gust of wind but, relentless, it kept trying until eventually it succeeded. Bruce was inspired and famously exclaimed “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again!” He reformed his army and would engage the English at the Battle of Bannockburn, in 1314 AD, where the Scots were finally victorious.

So don’t give up, if you think you might have a good idea!

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Books Marcus Aurelius Reviews

Roman Emperor Reviewed in the Wall Street Journal

How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius was reviewed by Benjamin Shull today in The Wall Street Journal. His article is titled ‘Meditations for the Masses’. It’s behind a paywall but I’ve picked out a few quotes below.

In “How to Think Like a Roman Emperor,” Mr. Robertson, a cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist, shows how Marcus’ example can be of use to the rest of us. Marcus’ worldview was not an idle intellectual exercise, he argues, but a form of wisdom forged by real-world experiences of friendship, loss and crisis.

I’m glad that people appreciate the connections made between Marcus’ life and his use of Stoicism, in the book. I tried to extract practical advice that is still relevant today, in dealing with problems like unhealthy desires and bad habits, managing anger, conquering fears and anxieties, living with chronic pain and illness, dealing with loss, and even coming to terms with our own mortality.

As he shares fragments from Marcus’ life, Mr. Robertson distills the emperor’s philosophy into useful mental habits—the core lessons of “How to Think Like a Roman Emperor” are more behavioral than historical. […]

The book combines philosophy, psychology, and ancient history, so it required a lot of research and was quite an undertaking to write. So I’m pleased that reviewers feel it comes together.

Mr. Robertson […] displays a sound knowledge of Marcus’ life and thought. The author’s accessible prose style, well-suited for recounting both philosophical concepts and arcane Roman history, contributes to its appeal. As an introduction to Stoic philosophy, it’s hard to beat the “Meditations,” which deserve to be read ahead of any commentary on them. That said, Mr. Robertson’s book succeeds on its own terms, presenting a convincing case for the continuing relevance of an archetypal philosopher-king.

I’ve always felt like what I’m doing, in a sense, is introducing people to this vast treasure trove of wisdom and beautiful writing, which we have inherited from Stoics like Marcus Aurelius.

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Stoicism

Response: Why is Silicon Valley so Obsessed With the Virtue of Suffering?

I’ve just read the op ed Why Is Silicon Valley So Obsessed With the Virtue of Suffering? by Nellie Bowles in The New York Times.

This won’t be a long response. The essence of her argument appears to be that Stoicism advocates self-inflicted suffering and that Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are obsessed with it for that reason. Of course, the premise is false. Stoicism does not advocate self-imposed suffering. Her examples are things like the following:

They [Silicon Valley types] sit in painful, silent meditations for weeks on end. They starve for days — on purpose. Cold morning showers are a bragging right. Notoriety is a badge of honor.

Stoics didn’t sit in painful, silent meditation for weeks on end. They didn’t normally seek notoriety either. Some modern followers of Stoicism, myself included, fast. That’s not the same as starving yourself. Lots of people fast for health reasons and thereby develop self-discipline and acquire other benefits. The Stoics would be against unhealthy forms of fasting, which is what I take “starving” yourself to mean. The ancient Stoics didn’t take cold showers but they did sometimes bathe in cold water. Some modern Stoics, myself included, regularly take cold showers. That’s hardly unusual either – so do lots of other people. It’s healthy, it wakes you up better than a cup of coffee, and it arguably leads to a greater ability to endure cold and other forms of physical discomfort. (I’m pretty happy walking around Toronto without a jacket in the snow because it doesn’t feel very cold to me, although everyone else seems to be wrapped up in thick jackets.) So people don’t do it just to “suffer” but because it’s good for them both in terms of physical health in terms of developing strength of character and self-discipline, etc.

Not all modern Stoics take cold showers or fast, though – I’m guessing less than 5% of them do. The ones who do are no more “obsessed with suffering” than are people who do Pilates, lift weights, walk long distances, go camping in the wilderness, or follow diets. Lots of people do things that require self-discipline and endurance because they consider them healthy or beneficial in certain respects. The Stoics don’t follow regimes in terms of eating, sleeping, or exercising primarily to improve their physical health. They’re supposed to be doing it mainly to improve their character by developing self-control and endurance, etc. However, they choose disciplines that are healthy rather than ones that are unhealthy because physical health is a “preferred indifferent” in Stoicism, i.e., something that’s preferable to its opposite despite not being among the most important things in life. If you’re going to develop self-discipline, in other words, you might as well train yourself to do something healthy rather than unhealthy, even if health isn’t your main reason for doing it.

Anyway, we’re clearly told that this is an article about Stoicism…

So the most helpful clues to understanding Silicon Valley today may come from its favorite ancient philosophy: Stoicism.

A word of advice to readers… Articles like these which claim to be discussing Stoicism (or any similar topic) but make no reference whatsoever to the relevant primary sources should set alarm bells ringing. It’s not clear that the author actually researched the subject by reading the Stoics as there’s literally no mention of anything they wrote. Seriously, there’s not a single quote from a Stoic in the entire piece. Yet their philosophy is being criticized. It is, in fact, being totally misrepresented.

As for the other mistakes in the article, I’ll just cover those by providing a list with brief comments:

  • “Virtue of suffering” – Suffering is not a virtue in Stoic ethics; it would either be classed as something bad or indifferent depending on whether we’re talking about emotional suffering (pathos) or unpleasant physical sensations such as pain, cold, or discomfort.
  • Cicero – Cicero was not a Stoic but rather a follower of the rival Academic school, albeit one who admired some aspects of Stoicism. The article almost acknowledges this but not clearly enough as it seems to focus on him as its main example of a historical proponent of Stoicism.
  • “tenets of stoicism” – The word “stoicism” (lower-case) denotes the modern concept of a psychological personality trait or coping style in which upsetting emotions are concealed or suppressed, like having a stiff upper-lip. The word “Stoicism” (capitalized) denotes an ancient Greek school of philosophy. They’re two very different things.
  • “Stoicism has been the preferred viral philosophy ‘for a moment’ for years now — or two decades, by one count.” – I don’t know how you’d quantify this but Stoicism has gone through various periods of popularity. I’d say the seeds of it’s modern resurgence were planted in the late 1950s with, among other things, the cognitive revolution in psychotherapy, during which authors such as Albert Ellis drew inspiration from Stoicism in developing modern cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). That reinvigorated interest in Stoicism as a form of psychological self-help from the 1980s onward around the time CBT went mainstream. (Indeed, publication data from Google Ngram shows that the popularity of Stoicism began rising in the late 1970s, four decades ago.)
  • “Stoicism’s popularity among the powerful elites of ancient Rome” – There’s no question that Stoicism was popular with wealthy and powerful Roman elites. However, it’s not a “Roman” thing. Right from the very outset, early Greek Stoicism was popular with the ruling elite. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, taught King Antigonus II Gonatas of Macedonia and other early Greek Stoics had wealthy and powerful students. Moreover, Stoicism was not confined to the elite. Zeno, by some accounts, lost his fortune at sea and lived like a beggar. Cleanthes, his successor as head of the school, was an ex-boxer who watered gardens at night to earn a living. Epictetus, the most famous Stoic teacher of the Roman imperial period, was a crippled former slave who lived in relative poverty.
  • “Joe Lonsdale […] sexual abuse” – This comes across as an ad hominem argument against the philosophy, i.e., one of the figures the author associates with Stoicism in the article has been criticized on the grounds listed. How does that actually reflect on Stoicism, though? Is Joe Lonsdale even a Stoic? (Not as far as I’m aware after searching on Google.) Is this meant to discredit Stoicism through some kind of guilt by association?
  • “Cicero Institute” – The whole article seems to be premised on the notion that the Cicero Institute has got something to do with Stoicism. Does it, though? I can’t actually see any mention of Stoicism anywhere on their website despite using a Google site search for the keyword. As far as I can tell this is just a mistake on the part of the journalist.
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Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius and the Little Birds

Marcus Aurelius often seems to turn everyday observations into philosophical metaphors, throughout his personal reflections in The Meditations. One of my favourite examples is the way he refers to sparrows and other birds, which were surely a very familiar sound and sight to him, especially while campaigning on the northern frontier, such as at Carnuntum where he wrote part of The Meditations.

In one such passage, the suddenness with which little sparrows flit away and vanish from sight is treated as a symbol for the fragility and transience of all material things.

At all times some things are hastening to come into being, and others to be no more; and of that which is coming to be, some part is already extinct. Flux and transformation are forever renewing the world, as the ever-flowing stream of time makes boundless eternity forever young. So in this torrent, in which one can find no place to stand, which of the things that go rushing past should one value at any great price? It is as though one began to lose one’s heart to a little sparrow flitting by, and no sooner has one done so than it has vanished from sight. (6.15)

He says that even our own lives are as transient as this flitting sparrow. In his letters, Marcus refers to children as little sparrows. Of his fourteen children, only five outlived him. So in this passage watching the little sparrows vanishing from sight may even be a metaphor for the loss of his own children.

In another passage, the birds he sees become a reminder of what it means to follow our nature, and work tirelessly at fulfilling our role in life.

Early in the morning, when you find it so hard to rouse yourself from your sleep, have these thoughts ready at hand: ‘I am rising to do the work of a human being. Why, then, am I so irritable if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into this world for? Or was I created for this, to lie in bed and warm myself under the bedclothes?’ ‘Well, it is certainly more pleasant.’ ‘So were you born for pleasure or, in general, for feeling, or for action? (5.1)

Do you not see, he asks, how “little birds”, and other animals, do their own work and play their part in the unfolding of universal Nature? Like the little birds we should be working away at playing our part, doing the work of a human being, without hesitation or reluctance.

Elsewhere he meditates on how “birds caring for their young” show a form of natural affection (philostorgia) for their own kind (9.9). The Stoics believe humans likewise have a natural instinct to care for their offspring, and their friends and loved ones, and to form communities and societies for their protection and mutual benefit. Human beings, despite their intelligence, often seem to forget this natural instinct, which even the little birds exhibit, toward caring for their own kind. It’s therefore our duty to remember and fulfil our natural potential for living harmoniously among others by cultivating the social virtues of justice, fairness, and kindness toward them.

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Uncategorized

Excerpt: The Practicing Stoic by Ward Farnsworth

I’m very grateful to Donald Robertson for allowing me to appear on his great blog! I’d like to use the chance to show you Stoically-inclined readers a bit from my new book The Practicing Stoic; perhaps some will find it interesting enough to check out the whole thing. The excerpt below suggests that Stoicism usually seeks to help us toward the sensibility, and toward the kinds of reactions to things, that would come naturally if we had longer experience of them. In effect the philosophy is a substitute for the passage of time. This helps explain the Stoic approach to emotion and compassion. A good Stoic reacts to suffering in the way that a veteran of it would be expected to react: with feeling and action, but probably without much emotion. That’s the synopsis; here’s the discussion—

* * *

I’d like to discuss a criticism that is sometimes made of Stoics. The criticism comes in response to this advice from Epictetus (or to other Stoic claims that resemble it):

When you see someone weeping in sorrow, either because his child goes abroad or his property is lost, don’t let yourself get carried away by the impression that he is suffering because of those external things. Hold this thought in mind: “what afflicts him is not what has happened, because it wouldn’t affect someone else the same way; what afflicts him is his opinion about it.” So far as words go, don’t hesitate to sympathize with him, or even to groan with him if he groans. But take care not to groan inside as well. —Epictetus, Enchiridion 16

That passage provoked this response from Joseph Addison much later:

As the Stoic philosophers discard all passions in general, they will not allow a wise man so much as to pity the afflictions of another. If thou seest thy friend in trouble, says Epictetus, thou mayst put on a look of sorrow, and condole with him, but take care that thy sorrow be not real. . . . For my own part, I am of opinion, compassion does not only refine and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind as that in which the Stoics placed their wisdom. —Addison, The Spectator no. 397 (1712)

Addison’s claim epitomizes a standard criticism of the Stoics—that their philosophy is heartless and at odds with compassion. The accomplished Stoic, if such a person ever did exist, might offer words of consolation but would feel nothing (it is said) for anyone else. The Stoic cannot care about others, or about the world, because that is a form of attachment to externals. This is all a misunderstanding. The Stoics do not condemn feeling. In important ways they endorse it. Stoics value compassion, detest indolence, and are committed to service to mankind—the opposite of what Addison thinks they want. But the Stoic would unhook these commitments from inner distress over any given case. For why stop with that case? There is cause for such distress in every direction, and meanwhile it distracts from the big picture and from anything constructive one might do about it. So yes, the Stoics consider feelings of pity unhelpful to anyone; but their aim is to do the same things without such pity that others would do on account of it. Epictetus’s way of putting the point might sound a bit harsh, but his conclusion isn’t much different in substance from this gentler line from Epicurus:

Let us share our friends’ suffering not with grief but with thoughtful understanding. —Epicurus, Vatican Sayings 66

Still, I would prefer not to defend the Stoics by saying that Addison didn’t read enough of them. There is plenty to refute him in what the Romans said, but diligent searching might find language elsewhere that gives support to some variation on his case. We at least have seen that Stoicism need not entail any of his conclusions. Instead of dwelling further on comparisons of one quotation to another, I would rather use his criticism as a chance to think further about the place of feeling and compassion in Stoicism, or anyway in the variety of it this book offers.

What Stoics wish to avoid are emotions or other states that interfere with the ability to see the world accurately—states of feeling, in other words, that get in the way of reason and arise from (or create) attachment to externals. Stoics have no difficulty with states that do not have those sources and effects. As a convenience, I refer to the good or unobjectionable states as feelings as distinct from emotions. The difference between feeling and emotion is important—or the difference, however it might better be worded, between those states that oust reason and those that are no threat to it and so do not trouble the Stoics. It matters because states of feeling, as so defined, may well be necessary to motivate compassion and otherwise contribute to admirable character. Emotion probably isn’t.

Let’s consider more closely the intended effect of Stoicism on the inner life of the student, and especially on the emotions, by comparing it to the effects of time. Start with the case that Addison describes: a friend stricken by terrible loss. Suppose you lived a life long enough to experience such grieving friends 1,000 times, and imagine your likely reaction when approached by the next friend—number 1,001. Not everyone reacts to repeated experience the same way, so take the most appealing scenario. Your attitude might resemble that of a doctor—a very good one, let’s say—who has had a long career of working with dying patients and their families. In the best doctor of that sort we would find kindness, warmth, and compassion. There would be feeling. But emotion would be unlikely. You would sympathize but you would not go through mourning of your own. You would have seen it all too many times for that.

So far these speculations involve no Stoicism. They are just observations about the way that long experience might affect the sensibilities of anyone. But the result of this thought experiment, if accepted, is a state of mind about the same as what the Stoics seek. The resemblance is natural. Time and experience are the teachers of life. They gradually bring about wisdom. Adam Smith said it this way:

Time, the great and universal comforter, gradually composes the weak man to the same degree of tranquility which a regard to his own dignity and manhood teaches the wise man to assume in the beginning. —Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)

My claim here is the converse. If the Stoic says we are fettered to externals, or vice, or emotion, it may be as accurate to say we are fettered to our inexperience. Only the novice is inflated and grasping and fearful; but we are all novices. Life is regrettably short because it does not allow us enough trials to become as wise as we would wish. Stoic philosophy is a compensation—a substitute for time, or simulation of it. Stoicism means to offer the wisdom while skipping the repetition; it tries to get by contemplation some of the lessons, immunities, and other features of character we would acquire naturally if we lived long enough. The “wise man” of the Stoics thus resembles one who has had long experience of life—far longer, perhaps, than anyone is able to have in fact. Stoicism is the philosophy of a thousand trials.

The connection between Stoicism and the consequences of time can be extended. Think of the effect that repetition has on other emotions. What is frightening at first usually becomes nothing, or loses force, with long enough exposure. The source of the fear doesn’t change; the mind does. Or imagine making a fortune and losing it a thousand times over, or loving and grieving a thousand times. You might not stop caring about these things, and might not want to. But you would probably gain a sense of equanimity about them and meet them with a certain detachment—with feeling but with reason, and thus without emotion. Little would likely be left of greed and vanity, either, after so much gain and loss. Experience is humbling. Instead you might have other types of joy—the calm kind that comes from appreciation and understanding.

To return to the point: the absence of emotion prescribed by the Stoics in response to a thing is also what we would expect naturally from long enough exposure to it. Feeling and compassion can survive and even grow with long repetition and experience. Emotion does not. The sifting between emotion and feeling that comes naturally with experience resembles what the Stoic aims to achieve by the practice of philosophy.

Connecting the Stoic disposition to the quality of character that arises from long experience is productive in several ways. First, it helps make the Stoic ideal less otherworldly. The long-experience view allows Stoicism to be viewed as an extension of the life we know—an effort to go farther down the road of being human, not to affect godliness. Stoicism tries to give us what we would gain with more difficulty, but naturally enough, if we had more time.

Second, the experience-based view makes the goals of Stoicism more familiar and easier to understand. Everyone has had small experiences of inurement by experience and the difference between feeling and emotion that can result. We don’t need a dozen lifetimes to get the idea of it. One can compare the first experience of grief with the tenth, or the first encounter with an amusement with the fiftieth, or the first kiss with the hundredth. These experiences need not lose their meaning or be had without feeling. We might say instead, in the most attractive case, that the feelings at stake mature and change. But even then such events do eventually lose their emotional charge and become no threat to reason. There are cases in which emotional inurement is harder to come by, of course. I only mean to say that the process of it, and the qualities of the Stoic “wise man,” are familiar enough to most people on a modest scale.

Third, the long-experience view of Stoicism clarifies the Stoic ideal as admirable. In the personality formed by many trials we find the qualities of the finished Stoic represented in an attractive way. There is nothing ugly in the type of character produced by long experience, or at least nothing necessarily so. It can be unattractive; sometimes experience jades us and dulls our capacities. But there is nobility in it when joined with compassion. Stoicism demands this. It seeks to create not just the mind matured by many trials, but the best version of it—the doctor who has learned with the passage of much time to care well and energetically for the patient, not the doctor who is bored.

Fourth, viewing Stoicism as similar to long experience can help to solve some conundrums. Sometimes the general principles of the philosophy can seem tricky to apply to particular facts. Stoics discourage the emotion of anger, but what if you are the victim of some grotesque injustice? Isn’t it then right to be angry—and maybe even important, since the anger will motivate efforts to stop the injustice from happening again? One can reason through that kind of problem with precepts that this book has discussed. You might say that the Stoic cares about justice and doesn’t need anger to motivate a reply to a violation of it, etc. But our current idea offers a shortcut. If you want to react to injustice like a Stoic, react like someone who knows it by long experience—not someone who has adapted to injustice and no longer cares, but perhaps someone whose life’s work is the correction of it. Those sorts of people, in my own experience, tend to meet injustice with feeling but little emotion. Their equilibrium isn’t upset by a fresh case of wrongdoing. They deal with it too often to respond that way. They are resolute, tough, and active in style; and (to return to our question) when the injustice afflicts someone else, they are highly compassionate. They have, for these purposes, become natural Stoics. The best lawyers can be like this.

We can end this part of the discussion by reversing our earlier thought experiment. You are grieving and can be consoled by either of two friends: one for whom your calamity is a new experience, and who is full of emotion about it on seeing your grief; or one who has seen it a thousand times, and so has warm and caring feeling but not emotion. I would take the second, but at any rate see no basis for admiring the first one more. The second one is the Stoic.

* * *

That is enough about heartlessness. By way of addendum, though, I wish to spend a few more words on the relationship between Stoicism and experience; for the discussion a moment ago mentioned some tradeoffs that deserve further comment. If experience erodes emotion, some might consider the erosion a loss, and then dread repetition precisely because emotions don’t survive it. One can think of cases where those who have been through an experience many times may seem less wise with respect to it. They can’t see it freshly; they barely notice it; they don’t appreciate it. They have been corrupted by adaptation.

It might be fairest to say there are different types of wisdom, or sensibilities helpful on different occasions. There is the sensibility of the veteran who has seen it (whatever it is) too many times to be emotional but has other advantages: perspective, good judgment, and the ease and warmth that arise from long familiarity and knowledge. Those are great virtues. They are central to Stoicism. But they aren’t the only ones, and aren’t always the ones most wanted even by a Stoic. There is also the sensibility of the newcomer to a subject—one who has the advantages of the amateur, such as appreciation of what is at hand.

These claims about the effects of experience and inexperience can be restated in terms referenced earlier in the book. The Stoic seeks the most useful perspective on all occasions. I have emphasized here that, with respect to emotion and adversity, Stoics want the kind of wisdom that we associate with long experience. But in certain settings they seek, in effect, the attitude of the newcomer.

“When then shall I see Athens again and the Acropolis?” Wretch, are you not content with what you see daily? Have you anything better or greater to see than the sun, the moon, the stars, the whole earth, the sea? —Epictetus, Discourses 2.16.32

Don’t imagine having things that you don’t have. Rather, pick the best of the things that you do have and think of how much you would want them if you didn’t have them. —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.27

In effect we can distinguish two kinds of mistakes. We fail to appreciate some things because they are too familiar. We overreact to others because they aren’t familiar enough. In the first case we suffer because we can’t see old things as a first-timer would. In the second we suffer because can’t see new things as a long-timer would. The Stoic is more concerned with the second kind of mistake than the first, but understands them both and tries to move from one point of view to another as appropriate to the situation.

One can revisit many topics in this book and reinterpret them according to how much repetition (of a hypothetical kind) would be found in the ideal mindset for dealing with them. Acceptance and satisfaction, and therefore detachment from desire, can often be furthered by the newcomer’s perspective—by learning to see familiar things as if they weren’t familiar, and to touch them without callouses on our fingers. That same perspective can help us see that a convention is idiotic or unjust in ways too familiar to be commonly perceived. Emotion and adversity (and sometimes desires, too) call for the opposite view—that is, for an attitude toward the subjects of those states that would be found in someone with long experience of them. When considering whatever one loves or hates—when considering any reaction to anything—it is instructive to ask how much of it is owed to the number of times one has encountered the subject, whether it be many or few.

* * *

Stoicism should not be overestimated. Reflection cannot produce all the qualities of character and feeling that long experience does, nor can it reverse them, which may be harder still. But Stoicism should not be underestimated, either, because reflection can help with some of this. The point may be seen in settings that do not involve emotion as well as in those that do. When one has studied novelty and thought about it for a sufficiently long time that it loses charm and is less likely to cause you to do foolish things, that is Stoicism, and it is to the good. (Or replace “novelty” with “luxury” or “status”—all the same.) The alternative is to be taken in by novelty again and again until it is finally drained of its charm by many hard lessons about its unimportance, maybe late in life. The sage saves the trouble.

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Books Interviews Marcus Aurelius Videos

Video Interview: How to Think Like a Roman Emperor

How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius is available for pre-order from all major online bookstores.

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Books Reviews Stoicism

Book Review: The Practicing Stoic

The Practicing Stoic: A Philosophical User’s Manual is a new book by Ward Farnsworth. Farnsworth is Dean of the University of Texas School of Law. He has previously written books on rhetoric, one specifically about the use of metaphor. This book struck me first and foremost as having been written with exceptional verbal clarity and precision. Perhaps that’s due in part to the author’s knowledge of rhetoric and his interest in the law.

I really enjoyed the book. It’s a valuable and well-written addition to the growing body of literature on Stoicism. In addition to being very nicely written, it’s also very well-organized and it includes many quotes from ancient Stoics and related thinkers that will probably be unfamiliar to most readers interested in Stoicism. So it definitely adds something – it’s not just another beginner’s guide to Stoicism.

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. Farnsworth includes his own commentary, which I found insightful, original, and therefore quite valuable.

He concludes with a chapter called Stoicism and its critics which cites important criticisms of Stoicism made by other authors. These are addressed and, again, this is worth reading because it dispels several common misconceptions about Stoicism such as the idea that Stoics are cold-hearted, unemotional, or lacking compassion.

I particularly liked his point that the goal of Stoicism resembles the sort of emotional response we’d expect someone to have to distressing events if they could have lived much longer and experienced them enough times to become used to them. He explains the Stoic attitude to consoling grieving friends as follows…

Your attitude might resemble that of a doctor – a very good one let’s say – who has had a long career of working with dying patients and their families. In the best doctor of that sort we would find kindness, warmth, and compassion. There would be feeling. But emotion [passion] would be unlikely. You would sympathize but you would not go through mourning of your own. You would have seen it all too many times for that.

In conclusion, I’d definitely encourage others interested in Stoicism to read this book. It’s probably one of the best books on the subject that I’ve read recently. As I mentioned above, it’s very well-written, using admirably precise language, and the selection and organization of quotes from the primary sources was very well done. Those of you who have read some books on Stoicism already will definitely find this a fresh take on things and I’d also think that newcomers to the subject would enjoy it and find it accessible.

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Interviews Podcasts

Podcast: A Stoic Response to Death, Pain, and Desire

https://anchor.fm/intellectualexplorersclub/episodes/Donald-Robertson—A-Stoic-Response-to-Death–Pain–and-Desire-e2pn8s

Donald Robertson – A Stoic Response to Death, Pain, and Desire
An episode of Intellectual Explorers Club by Intellectual Explorers Club

Peter Limberg is the host and producer of the Intellectual Explorers Club podcast. A podcast of ideas. Big ideas. Ones that will enrich your map of reality, or at least make it more interesting.

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Books Reviews Stoicism

Stoic Book Review: More Than Happiness by Antonia Macaro

More Than Happiness: Buddhist and Stoic Wisdom for a Sceptical Age is a new book by existential psychotherapist Antonia Macaro.  Macaro is also the co-author, along with philosopher Julian Baggini, of The Shrink and the Sage, based on their Financial Times column.

Macaro says that the philosophy she most identifies with is actually Aristotelianism but that over the years she’s found herself repeatedly coming back to both Stoicism and Buddhism, and wrestling with their doctrines. She notes that both Stoicism and Buddhism have influenced modern cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). She also observes that philosophies such as Aristotelianism and Epicureanism, which were contemporaries of ancient Stoicism, have not experienced a similar resurgence of interest for some reason. She suggests that, paradoxically, this might be because these philosophies of life appear somewhat less radical and demanding than Stoicism and Buddhism.

Her stated goal in this book is to extract beneficial aspects of the two philosophies, Stoicism and Buddhism, that are compatible with a modern naturalistic worldview. Macaro is also right to emphasize from the outset that there are many different versions of Buddhism and there are also some variations in the doctrines of the Stoic school. So she has to choose an interpretation of each to focus on because it would be impossible to compare every version of these philosophies. Buddhism, in particular, is an extremely diverse tradition both in terms of theory and practice. Stoicism is more consistent, although there’s clearly a difference in emphasis, for example, between Epictetus and Seneca. This may be an indication that they represented different types of Stoicism. We’re told, indeed, in one ancient source that by the Roman Imperial period, Stoicism had divided into three main branches represented by the followers of the last three scholarchs of the school: Diogenes of Babylon, Antipater of Tarsus, and Panaetius of Rhodes.

The first chapter of Macaro’s book provides a simple and highly readable introduction to Buddhism and Stoicism. She raises the question as to what extent antiquated-sounding religious and metaphysical doctrines are necessary to the modern reception of both philosophies.  Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the causes of human suffering. Chapters 4 and 5 with their solutions. The second part of the book then focuses on what useful elements may be extracted from both philosophies by those who reject the ancient metaphysical teachings in favour of a modern naturalistic perspective.

I thought this was an excellent book and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about what Stoicism and Buddhism have to offer us today as guides to living.  It was beautifully written and very clearly explained the key concepts.  I’m more into Stoicism than the author, though, so there are a couple of points I want to make about her interpretation of that philosophy.  In my opinion, Macaro is actually more of a Stoic than she realizes.  I’ll now explain some of my reasons for saying that…

Does Stoicism Advocate Eliminating All Emotions?

There’s a common misconception that the ancient Stoics advocated the elimination of all of our emotions.  That would obviously be a concept antagonistic to modern psychotherapy and something very few people would find appealing today.  Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine how a philosophy like that could have been popular at any point in time.  However, at least in some instances, Macaro does seem to portray Stoicism as advocating the complete elimination of all of our emotions.

For instance, she sums up the goal of Stoicism as “eradicating the emotions and achieving freedom from disturbance.”  This notion recurs in various guises throughout the book.  For example, she also writes “For the Stoics, there is no such thing as an appropriate emotion.” Later in the book she appears to write of the emotions in general:

Famously, unlike the Stoics, Aristotle called for their moderation rather than eradication. It is inappropriate emotions and excessive attachments that we should endeavour to change.

That’s not quite right, though. The latter description could just as easily be applied to the Stoics because their goal is not to eradicate emotion per se but rather to correct the mistaken beliefs underlying certain emotions described by them as unhealthy, excessive and irrational, and thereby transform them into more healthy, moderate, and rational ones.

I think Macaro has perhaps been too influenced by reading Martha Nussbaum’s account of Stoicism, which also interprets the philosophy as advocating the complete “extirpation” of all emotions, in general terms. Many readers notice that Nussbaum’s Therapy of Desire seems to contradict this view at times by also acknowledging the Stoic theory of eupatheiai or healthy emotions.  Nussbaum doesn’t really explain how the Stoics could have advocated both the attainment of healthy emotions and the eradication of emotion in general.  Macaro’s book contains similarly conflicting statements about what the Stoics believed. Nussbaum is certainly a respected classicist, although her area of expertise is more Aristotelianism than Stoicism and many people have questioned her interpretation of the Stoics, which seems to have been influenced by her personal preference for Aristotle’s philosophy.  I certainly don’t get the impression that many (any?) people in the modern Stoicism community actually read the Stoics as advocating the total extirpation of all emotions.

I wish Macaro had been able to read the recent book on Stoicism by Brad Inwood, Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Yale, who is much more of an expert on ancient Stoicism than Nussbaum.  She would then have been able to compare his more balanced (and more accurate) account of Stoicism against Nussbaum’s portrayal of them. Inwood, pace Nussbaum, makes it very clear this notion of complete “extirpation” (or elimination) of emotions is indeed just a common misinterpretation of Stoicism and that it’s definitely not what the ancient Stoics actually believed:

There is a stereotype of Stoicism familiar to everyone, the claim that Stoicism involves being relentlessly rational, but without a trace of emotion—Mr Spock from Star Trek, only more so. That this isn’t the right view of Stoicism is now generally understood, and specialists will even point out that the passions (pathē) from which the Stoic wise person is said to be free are not what we mean by emotions but a more narrowly defined group of states of mind that are by definition pathological. The wise person may well be perfectly rational, but that doesn’t deprive him or her of all affective or emotional experience.

Inwood, Stoicism, 2018

In passages like the following, though, Macaro seems to be saying the opposite: that she reads Stoicism as advocating the ideal of totally depriving us of all our emotional experience:

We don’t have to agree with the Stoic ideal of freeing ourselves from all emotion [italics added], but we can agree that we shouldn’t get too joyful or distressed about things that are relatively unimportant.

I think part of the confusion here is caused by the too heavy-handed translation of apatheia as “freedom from emotions”:

The Stoics used the term apatheia to refer to their ideal of being ‘free from emotions’ (which is what the term literally means), although different Stoics held different views on what exactly this involved.

I would say, pace Macaro, that the word literally means not being in a passion (pathos), something slightly different from what she seems to mean by being “free from emotions”.  To be more specific, what the Stoics have in mind are irrational, unhealthy, and excessive feelings (both emotions and desires), which are potentially under voluntary control, and from which we suffer. They don’t just mean “emotion” in general.  Cicero mentioned the problem of translating pathos from Greek Stoicism into Latin.  He explains that these “passions” make the lives of most people a misery and that he was tempted simply to translate this term as “illness” but thinks “emotional disturbance” or “perturbation” better captures the Stoics’ meaning and makes more sense as a general term (De Finibus, 3.35).  Indeed, the word pathos is also the source of our modern term “pathological”, as in “psychopathology” or mental health problems.  In ancient Stoicism it specifically denoted unhealthy emotions not unlike those addressed in modern psychotherapy.

Moreover, Diogenes Laertius also tried to explain how the Stoics distinguished what they meant by the apatheia of the wise man from the same word used in a different, more negative sense:

They say the wise man is also without passions [apathê], because he is not vulnerable to them. But the bad man is called “without passions” in a different sense, which means the same as “hard-hearted” and “insensitive”. (7.117)

Diogenes Laertius

Nussbaum, and Macaro, seem to interpret the word as meaning unemotional, which is more like the second meaning above (“hard-hearted” or “insensitive”). We’re told emphatically that’s not what the Stoics meant, though.

Note that the wise man isn’t even said to be completely devoid of (unhealthy) passions here but to be free from them in the sense of not being vulnerable to their influence. The same word is used to call vicious men hard-hearted and insensitive (lacking in love or affection) but we’re explicitly told here that that’s not what the Stoics meant when they talk about the apatheia of the Sage. Epictetus says something quite similar, that Stoics ought not to be free from passions (apathê) in the sense of being unfeeling “like a statue”, and he adds that this has to do with engaging in “appropriate action” and maintaining one’s natural and acquired relationships, as a family member and a citizen (Discourses, 3.2).

Cicero also portrays the Stoic Laelius the Wise as saying that it would be the greatest possible mistake to try to eliminate feelings of friendship, because even animals experience natural affection for their offspring, which Stoics viewed as the foundation of human love and friendship (Laelius, 13). We would not only be dehumanising ourselves by eliminating natural affection between friends, he says, but reducing ourselves below animal nature to something more like a mere tree-trunk or a stone. He goes so far as to warn us that we should turn a deaf ear to anyone who foolishly suggests that the good life entails having “the hardness of iron” in terms of our emotions. Seneca, too, says:

There are misfortunes which strike the sage – without incapacitating him, of course – such as physical pain, infirmity, the loss of friends or children, or the catastrophes of his country when it is devastated by war. I grant that he is sensitive to these things, for we do not impute to him the hardness of a rock or of iron. There is no virtue in putting up with that which one does not feel. (On the Constancy of the Sage, 10.4)

Seneca elsewhere explains that whereas the Epicureans mean “a mind immune to feeling” when they speak of apatheia, this “unfeelingness” is actually the opposite of what the Stoics intended (Letters, 9). “This is the difference between us Stoics and the Epicureans; our wise man overcomes every discomfort but feels it, theirs does not even feel it.” The virtue of the Sage consists in his ability to endure painful feelings and rise above them, with magnanimity, while continuing to maintain his relationships and interaction with the world. And, again, elsewhere he wrote:

I do not withdraw the wise man from the category of man, nor do I deny to him the sense of pain as though he were a rock that has no feelings at all. I remember that he is made up of two parts: the one part is irrational, — it is this that may be bitten, burned, or hurt; the other part is rational, — it is this which holds resolutely to opinions, is courageous, and unconquerable. […] You must not think that our human virtue transcends nature; the wise man will tremble, will feel pain, will turn pale, for all these are sensations of the body. (Seneca, Letters 71)

Even the Stoic wise man, therefore, experiences a range of natural sensations and emotions.  Indeed, similar figures of speech about the goal not being to become like a man as unfeeling, hard-hearted, or unemotional as stone, are scattered throughout the Stoic sources. It sounds to me like it had long ago become a familiar or cliched way in which they distanced themselves from what they saw as a common misinterpretation of their philosophy, probably because this lack of emotion was an idea more associated with earlier traditions, such as Cynicism, rather than with the Stoics themselves.

Elsewhere in her book, like Nussbaum, Macaro appears to contradict her depiction of Stoicism as advocating “freeing ourselves from all emotion” when she acknowledges that the Stoic ideal consisted in experiencing certain “good passions” (eupatheiai).

But even more important is cultivating what could be called ‘calm emotions’. For the Stoics, these were joy, wishing and caution. These are supposed to be a rational alternative to ordinary kinds of emotions: joy replaces pleasure, wishing replaces desire and caution replaces fear. But these are not, as one might think at first sight, just milder, more reasonable versions of their nefarious counterparts. Rather, they occur only in relation to virtue and/or lack of it, resulting in the limited emotional palette of joy at having acted virtuously, wishing that we were more virtuous, or caution when our virtue is in danger. No emotions other than the calm variety are considered legitimate.

She adds “There is another stumbling block: for the Stoics, only the sage is able to experience these calm emotions.” This is partially true but misleading.

The Stoics clearly believed that the rest of us are capable of experiencing healthy emotions, which is precisely what Macaro seems to be interpreting them as denying here. All of the major surviving Stoic sources describe the experience of natural healthy emotions. For example, Marcus Aurelius frequently refers to love and friendship, cheerfulness or joy, and also a healthy sense of shame or aversion to vice as within the range of emotions experienced by someone practising Stoicism. The love or joy of a Sage might be perfect and our own glimpses of healthy, rational, and moderate versions of these feelings may be imperfect but the Stoics certainly don’t advise us to try to eliminate them. Rather they acknowledge that rational beings have the seeds of virtue already within them and as such are capable of glimpsing perfect wisdom. So we should, of course, nurture the attitudes that underlie these healthy and praiseworthy emotions.

Marcus Aurelius, for example, praises his Stoic teacher, Sextus of Chaeronea, in Book 1 of The Meditations, for being “free from passions and yet full of love” (philostorgia).  He obviously cannot mean free from all emotion but “passions” here are clearly a specific class of unhealthy and irrational emotions.  Moreover, Marcus clearly does not think that a Stoic like Sextus should have sought to eradicate this rational love, and purged it from his heart, just because it’s inferior to the ideal love expressed by the perfect Sage. Passages like these appear to provide evidence that Macaro’s interpretation of Stoicism, which she feels to be very much at odds with common sense, is also at odds with what the Stoics actually believed.  For instance, Marcus mentions “love” far more times throughout The Meditations than he mentions virtue and at no point does he indicate that he interprets Stoicism as requiring him to eradicate the healthy, rational sort of love from his heart. On the contrary, he clearly aspires to cultivate more of these feelings.

Conclusion

Surely most readers of Macaro’s book will be puzzled as to how she can both claim that Stoicism advocates an ideal that requires “freeing ourselves from all emotion” and also that it “[sees] a place for ‘calm emotions’”? On the face of it, these two statements and the others like them scattered throughout the text are at odds with one another.  Moreover, as Prof. Inwood put it, this notion that Stoicism advocated eradicating all trace of emotion is mistaken because “the passions from which the Stoic wise person is said to be free are not what we mean by emotions but a more narrowly defined group of states of mind that are by definition pathological.”

Without going into too much detail, although she certainly does touch on the subject, I also think Macaro’s account of Stoicism doesn’t fully recognize the significance of the concept of proto-passions (propatheiai) and the sense in which it conflicts with the claim that Stoicism advocates the elimination of all emotion.  I also think she overstates the extent to which Stoicism advocated asceticism.  I’d therefore advise readers who are particularly interested in Stoicism to look at a wider range of commentaries to get a more rounded and balanced picture of the philosophy.  

Overall, though, with those reservations in mind, I’d recommend this book. It’s very easy to read and I’m actually in agreement with much of what it says about both Stoicism and Buddhism.  I think most readers will find aspects of this book helpful in their daily lives. It’s very well-written, as I mentioned above, and even where I disagree with the interpretations of Stoicism it contains, I certainly think they’re worth reading and evaluating. Most people will read this as a general introduction to Buddhism and Stoicism, for daily life, and they’ll definitely get a lot out of it in that respect.

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Socrates Stoicism

The Stoic Philosophy of Michael Cohen?

Today I was trying to write an article discussing my new book How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius when something caught my attention.  It was the story of a lone figure facing his destiny in court.  One of the historic turning points following a period of intense political turmoil.  He speaks in paradoxical language about wisdom, virtue, freedom, and the meaning of life…

No, it wasn’t Socrates in Plato’s Apology.  It was Michael Cohen, aka Donald Trump’s erstwhile fixer and (sort of) lawyer.  As I was listening to the news today, I realized, to my surprise, that Cohen’s sentencing statement contained references to a way of looking at events that resembled the ancient doctrines of Socratic and Stoic philosophy. 

In case you’ve been living under a rock on Mars for the past couple of years, the news is that Cohen has pled guilty to eight criminal charges: five counts of tax evasion, one count of making an excessive campaign contribution, one count of causing an unlawful corporate campaign contribution and one of making false statements to a federally insured bank.  Today (12th Dec) was his day in court to be sentenced and also his big chance to summon up all of his rhetorical powers and try get himself out of the pickle he’s in. 

Perhaps surprisingly, Cohen’s sentencing statement gets off on a philosophical footing.  It opens with a famous quotation from Viktor Frankl, the author and existential psychotherapist, who survived the Nazi concentration camps:

I take full responsibility for each act that I pled guilty to, the personal ones to me and those involving the President of the United States of America. Viktor Frankl in his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” he wrote, “There are forces beyond your control that can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”

Michael Cohen

Frankl didn’t seem to realize this but the Stoics had already made this one of the central principles of their philosophy.  “It’s not things that upset us,” said Epictetus, the most famous of all Roman Stoic teachers, “but our judgements about them.”  According to the Stoics, and Frankl, we’re not free to control the events that befall us but we are free to decide how to respond, and how we think about them.  Apparently this is also Cohen’s philosophy and he wanted to make that clear to the judge, his family, and everyone else who was listening, presumably up to and including President Trump whom Cohen has implicated in some of these crimes.  Cohen’s words here allude to the fact this has already led to the current President of the USA being named in court filings as an unindicted co-conspirator.  That’s possibly about as close as a sitting president can get to actually being indicted for a federal crime. 

What Cohen seems to be trying to say here is that his willingness to voluntarily plead guilty should prove that he’s now taking full ownership for the crimes he committed.  (Although, that said, a lot of people believe there are plenty of other crimes he could have pled guilty to but hasn’t.)

That’s just the beginning, though.  Cohen immediately follows up the quote from Viktor Frankl with a philosophical paradox worthy of Socrates himself:

Your Honor, this may seem hard to believe, but today is one of the most meaningful days of my life. The irony is today is the day I am getting my freedom back as you sit at the bench and you contemplate my fate.

Michael Cohen

He’s implying that by finally taking responsibility for his crimes, and confessing them publicly in court, he’s made his life mean something once again.  Paradoxically, the day they sentence him to prison, he says, will be the day he regains his existential freedom.  This was the part that caught my attention when I heard it on the news.  Cohen’s saying that true freedom comes from within.  Even the most powerful ruler in the world can be imprisoned by his own passions and vices, if he’s a tyrant.  On the other hand, even though he’s chained and thrown in prison, a wise man can achieve true freedom, within his own mind, by liberating himself from falsehood and embracing the truth.  

Whether he realized it or not, Cohen is actually uttering one of the famous paradoxes of Stoic philosophy.  Only the wise man is really free and everyone else is enslaved.  Even when the wise man is imprisoned by a tyrant or sentenced to death like Socrates, he is still freer than everyone else, including his oppressors.  The man who is bitter, though, and hates his situation in life, is in a prison of his own making, even though he might be serving at the court of a great king, who lives in a fine palace.

What then is the punishment of those who do not accept? It is to be what they are. Is any person dissatisfied with being alone? let him be alone. […] Cast him into prison. What prison? Where he is already, for he is there against his will; and where a man is against his will, there he is in prison. So Socrates was not in prison, for he was there willingly. 

Epictetus

Indeed, Cohen goes on to make it clear that from the day he entered Trump’s service until this very moment, when he publicly disowns him in court by confessing to the crimes they committed together, he’s been living in a psychological prison of his own making.

I have been living in a personal and mental incarceration ever since the fateful day that I accepted the offer to work for a famous real estate mogul whose business acumen I truly admired. In fact, I now know that there is little to be admired. I want to be clear. I blame myself for the conduct which has brought me here today, and it was my own weakness, and a blind loyalty to this man that led me to choose a path of darkness over light. It is for these reasons I chose to participate in the illicit act of the President rather than to listen to my own inner voice which should have warned me that the campaign finance violations that I later pled guilty to were insidious.

Michael Cohen

It turns out that like Socrates, Cohen has an “inner voice” or daimonion that warns him not to undertake certain actions.  Socrates listened to his when it told him not to accept favours from the powerful and thereby make himself indebted to them.  Cohen says his mistake, by contrast, was to ignore his own inner voice and go down the “path of darkness” by agreeing to commit various crimes on behalf of Donald Trump.

Trump keeps calling Cohen weak, because he’s flipped and turned witness against his former boss.  However, in another paradox worthy of Socrates and the Stoics, Cohen agrees that he was “weak” but only in the past when he was acting the tough guy as Trump’s fixer.  

Recently, the President Tweeted a statement calling me weak, and he was correct, but for a much different reason than he was implying. It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds rather than to listen to my own inner voice and my moral compass. My weakness can be characterized as a blind loyalty to Donald Trump, and I was weak for not having the strength to question and to refuse his demands. I have already spent years living a personal and mental incarceration, which no matter what is decided today, owning this mistake will free me to be once more the person I really am.  

Michael Cohen

Cohen is saying that true weakness consists in acting viciously, through moral blindness.  True strength consists in freeing yourself from mental and emotional imprisonment by taking responsibility for your actions, and speaking the truth about them when it matters.  Cohen is saying that whereas he previously thought strength meant being a “loyal soldier to the President” he now realizes that was actually just weakness, and true strength would have consisted in finding the courage to say no to Trump and exposing his crimes much earlier, for the sake of his country.

Cohen promised the judge that he would stay on the straight and narrow road going forward: “I now know that every action I take in the future has to be well thought out and with honorable intention because I wish to leave no room for future mistakes in my life.”  He apologized to his family and the people of the United States in general, for his lying to them, but he didn’t actually apologize to Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, or the other women who were direct victims of his actions on behalf of Donald Trump.  

I found this statement fascinating.  It left me with a lot of unanswered questions, though.  Did he even write it himself?  Does he really mean all the things he said today in court?  I recently wrote an article about Socrates, the Stoics and Roger Stone, another of Trump’s associates whose time in the spotlight is presumably coming up very soon.  Stone has made a career out of being a self-described political “dirty trickster” and revels in his infamy.  In his recent book, he brags shamelessly about his use of the “Big Lie” technique pioneered by the Nazi propagandists:

Erroneously attributed to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, the “big lie” manipulation technique was actually first described in detail by Adolf Hitler himself. […] Nonetheless, the tactic of creating a lie so bold, massive, and even so monstrous that it takes on a life of its own, is alive and well all through American politics and news media. Make it big, keep it simple, repeat it enough times, and people will believe it.

Roger Stone

For all we know, Cohen shares the same shamelessly cynical philosophy of life, which Stone implies was the key to Trump’s electoral success.  I’d like to think Cohen’s more sincere and, for instance, he really meant his closing words:

Most all, I want to apologize to the people of the United States. You deserve to know the truth and lying to you was unjust. I want to thank you, your Honor, for all the time I’m sure you’ve committed to this matter and the consideration that you have given to my future. […] And I thank you, your Honor, I am truly sorry, and I promise I will be better. 

Michael Cohen

The judge didn’t seem persuaded, though.  He sentenced Cohen to three years in federal prison, which could have been worse but still clearly wasn’t the news for which he or his lawyers had been hoping.  Cohen said he was ready to take responsibility for his crimes, though, and accept his fate.  The real test of his newfound Stoicism therefore will be whether, as Epictetus puts it, he can write poetry contentedly while serving time inside.

And we shall then be imitators of Socrates, when we are able to write paeans in prison.

Epictetus