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Episode 13, Donald Robertson
I did this interview about Stoicism and CBT recently for Daniel Mullin’s audio podcasts on philosophy…
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Video: Marcus Aurelius’ Stoicism
Video of Prof. Chris Gill discussing Marcus Aurelius’ Stoicism…
A discussion between Christopher Gill, Professor of Ancient Thought at the University of Exeter, and Patrick Ussher, PhD Student at the University of Exeter. Topics covered include: what we can learn from the last Stoic Week, what we hope to do for the next Stoic Week, and what the project should aim for long-term.
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Pleasure, Deprivation, and Indifference
By Camden Gaspar
One of the most common questions that newcomers to Stoicism have is, “What pleasures should I avoid?” They want to know, specifically, if things like alcohol, video games, gambling, and the like, should be avoided in pursuit of a happy life. This is a fair question, but it’s ultimately the wrong one. Stoicism, contrary to what some may say, is not about depriving yourself of everything you enjoy. It’s not about seeing a beautiful painting or sculpture as a colorless mass, or eating a delicious meal and tasting nothing, or refusing to go out with friends.
No, the Stoics didn’t look at pleasure as something to be avoided. If the goal is a happy life, then we must understand where and how pleasure, certainly a big part of happiness, fits into the big picture. The role that pleasure plays in life according to the Stoic conception is that it must follow virtue. Without virtue, life’s pleasures are hollow traps. They can enslave you and make you dependent on their constant presence. Without these pleasures, life becomes unbearable, leaving you weak and despondent.
What Stoicism is about is giving you the emotional and mental armor to steel yourself against the ups and downs that life inevitably puts you through. It gives you the means by which you can experience pain and pleasure and weather both, because both can lead to ruin if you haven’t trained yourself to handle them properly. In the case of pleasure, a well-trained mind would be able to see the pleasure as an “indifferent” in the words of Diogenes Laertius. That’s part of the work of the Stoic practitioner: to understand that pleasure (and pain) are ephemeral. What you love can be taken away, or even turn on you.
Fortune is Fickle
Stoicism gives you the means by which you can experience pain and pleasure and weather both, because both can lead to ruin if you haven’t trained yourself to handle them properly. In the case of pleasure, a well-trained mind would be able to see the pleasure as an “indifferent” in the words of Diogenes Laertius. That’s part of the work of the Stoic practitioner: to understand that pleasure (and pain) are ephemeral. What you love can be taken away, or even turn on you. For this reason, we “must be attentive to all the advantages that adorn life, but with over-much love for none — the user, but not the slave, of the gifts of Fortune.”
Seneca reminds us that we can enjoy the pleasures that come to us as a result of good fortune, but that we should always view them with suspicion and a willingness to part with them if needed. As Diogenes says, we must be indifferent – enjoying the pleasures when we have them and not allowing their absence to break us.
Virtue as the Leader
The Stoics saw areté or virtue as being the highest good. According to Robin Campbell, this supreme ideal “is usually summarized in ancient philosophy as a combination of four qualities: wisdom (or moral insight), courage, self-control, and justice (or upright dealing).” The Roman Stoic, Seneca, in his essay “On the Happy Life” argues that virtue is like the leader in a battle. Real virtue, like any good leader, must lead from the front. Everything else is subordinate.
We can only experience pleasure and happiness if we make virtue the ultimate pursuit in our lives. Seneca states that by pursuing virtue, happiness and pleasure will naturally ensue as a by-product. It doesn’t work the other way around, pursuing pleasure before virtue. Virtue is the vital tool that allows pleasure to be a rejuvenating force in our lives by ensuring that it doesn’t take over everything else.
Additionally, practicing virtue in a haphazard or fake way will not work. Virtue cannot be faked. It’s something you have to cultivate by actually practicing it in the real world. Stoicism and virtue can only exist where failure and ruin are a possibility. Seneca points out that pleasure is like the flowers that sprout in a field that a farmer has tilled. They are pleasant – a welcome addition to the scenery, but they aren’t why the field was plowed in the first place. According to Seneca: “Just so pleasure is neither the cause nor the reward of virtue, but its by-product, and we do not accept virtue because she delights us, but if we accept her, she also delights us.”
Goals and Purpose
A corollary to the pursuit of virtue is that you actually have to be striving for something meaningful in your life. Working toward a chosen task or goal where you are challenged along the way – in your career, family, relationships – will naturally lead to setbacks and disappointment. This is where the Stoic begins to practice what he preaches.
Seneca, in his letters, reminds that we should always be working toward something greater than ourselves. This gives us direction and keeps us grounded. Where pleasure comes into the picture is when we need to take a break from our work for sanity’s sake. “I’m not telling you to always be bent over some book or writing tablets,” says Seneca, “The mind has to be given some time off, but in such a way that it may be refreshed, not relaxed until it falls to pieces.”
Ask yourself: “Am I using my leisure time to refresh myself, or am I running away from my responsibilities?” Very often, people use pleasure, whether it’s video games, drugs, travel, etc, to run away from the difficulties of life and the expectations placed upon them as members of society. “If one accomplishes some good though with toil, the toil passes, but the good remains; if one does something dishonorable with pleasure, the pleasure passes, but the dishonor remains,” says Musonius Rufus. If you are at a point where you neglect the more nourishing parts of life: family, friends, career, hobbies, etc. in order to tend to your pleasures, you will find that when the pleasure fades, it leaves nothing worthwhile behind.
Living with Pleasure
The great preservers and transmitters of Stoic philosophy, to my knowledge, never strictly forbade their listeners from engaging in a specific pleasure. And even if they did, so what? They weren’t deities or prophets. Stoicism isn’t a religion, where salvation is promised to devoted followers and damnation to those who ignore the teachings. You don’t have to follow any of it if you don’t want to. But, speaking from personal experience and the experiences of others, your life will improve if you do.
Stoicism takes into account that we will fail, and often, we will fail repeatedly. We will get too attached to something that doesn’t really belong to us and be distraught when we lose it, we will get overly emotional when something unpleasant happens. That’s okay, as long as you can reflect and recognize what you can do better next time and constantly be striving for improvement.
When you read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, you might notice that Marcus tends to go over the same themes and ideas over and over again. This isn’t by accident. Each day, when Marcus sat down to write what was essentially his journal/diary, he would reflect on the situations and problems he had during the day and how he dealt with them or should have dealt with them. When we see the same issues cropping up, such as dealing with praise, we know that he was probably not as gracious and stoic as he would have liked and had to give himself a reminder.
Marcus wrote of his adoptive father: “One might say of him what we’re told [by Xenophon] of Socrates, that he could abstain from or enjoy those things that many people are not strong enough to refrain from and too much inclined to enjoy. But to have the strength to persist in the one case and to abstain in the other is typical of a man with a perfect and indomitable mind.” For Marcus, his adoptive father was the living model of Stoic indifference – to avoid being trapped by the pleasures that other men allowed to take over their lives and instead to view them with indifference.
Stoicism doesn’t ask us to live without pleasure. It teaches us how to live with it. To be able to have the things that make us happy, whether they are just little pleasures like a glass of wine before bed, or the bigger things like a vacation, and understand that they are transient, temporary, and not fully belonging to us, but rather a gift a fortune.
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Seneca’s Stoic Role-Models
Seneca’s Stoic Role-Models
Copyright © Donald Robertson, 2013. All rights reserved. An excerpt from Teach yourself Stoicism. Image of Zeno, copyright the trustees of the British Museum.
The followers of Epicurus placed importance on possessing portraits or rings bearing his likeness, which may perhaps have helped them imagine his salutary presence accompanying them in life (Hadot, 2002, p. 124). The British Museum actually possess an ornate gem from the Roman imperial period depicting Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, which possibly served a similar purpose. Seneca likewise says that Stoics should keep likenesses of great men and even celebrate their birthdays (Letters, 64). He lists his favourite philosophical role-models as:
- Socrates
- Plato – somewhat surprisingly for a Stoic!
- Zeno, the founder of Stoicism
- Cleanthes, the second head of the Stoa
- Laelius the Wise, one of the first famous Roman Stoics
- Cato of Utica, the great Roman Stoic political hero
There are some notable things about this list:
- It begins with Socrates, whom most Stoics appear to treat as their supreme role model.
- It includes Plato. Zeno’s Republic, the founding text of Stoicism, was a scathing critique of Plato’s book of the same name. However, Panaetius and Posidonius reputedly integrated Stoicism and Platonism, so this may indicate that Seneca is more aligned with the Middle Stoa, which would arguably be consistent with the rest of his writings.
- It includes Zeno and Cleanthes, the first two Stoic scholarchs, although Seneca seldom mentions them in his writings. Yet it ignores Chrysippus, the third scholarch and most frequently cited of all Stoics.
- Seneca makes a point of including two famous Roman Stoics: Laelius and Cato.
- The inclusion of Laelius the Wise, a student of Panaetius, highlights his importance, and that of the Scipionic Circle to Stoicism.
- Epictetus, by comparison, most frequently cites Socrates, Diogenes the Cynic, and Zeno, as his influences, and he also quotes Pythagoras and mentions Heraclitus with admiration.
- Marcus Aurelius lists Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Epictetus, and Chrysippus, as philosophers he particularly admires.
- Seneca does not include any reference to Diogenes or other Cynics in this list, which perhaps suggests he aligned with a branch of (Middle) Stoicism that distanced itself from the Cynics and placed more emphasis on Platonism instead.
Elsewhere, he gives a beautiful account of this practice, drawing on Epicurean teachings:
‘We need to set our affections on some good man and keep him constantly before our eyes, so that we may live as if he were watching us and do everything as if he saw what we were doing.’ This, my dear Lucilius, is Epicurus’ advice, and in giving it he has given us a guardian and a moral tutor – and not without reason, either: misdeeds are greatly diminished if a witness is always standing near intending doers. The personality should be provided with someone it can revere, someone whose influence can make even its private, inner life more pure. Happy the man who improves other people not merely when he is in their presence but even when he is in their thoughts! And happy, too, is the person who can so revere another as to adjust and shape his own personality in the light of recollections, even, of that other. (Letters, 11)
The image of this exemplary person should therefore be recalled frequently “either as your guardian or as your model”, as someone observing us, and perhaps offering guidance, or as an ideal to emulate. Seneca puts it nicely when he says that we need the concept of a genuinely “wise and good” person as a standard against which to measure ourselves because “Without a ruler to do it against you won’t make the crooked straight.”
Stoicism Group on Facebook has nearly 300 members now!
We’re nearing 300 members already on the new Stoicism discussion forum on Facebook. It’s very active and is proving an excellent resource for meeting other students of Stoicism and exchanging ideas!
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Stoicism and the Death of Socrates
Excerpt from Teach yourself Stoicism and the Art of Happiness (2013), copyright © Donald Robertson.
Xenophon wrote that his friend and teacher, Socrates, faced the death-sentence with absolute serenity and fortitude, and that it was “generally agreed that no one in the memory of man has ever met his death more nobly” (Memorabilia, 4.8). We’ve already mentioned the events surrounding the trial and execution of Socrates. The Stoics undoubtedly treat this as the example par excellence of a “good death”. In reading about Socrates’ preparing to meet his death, in a sense, we accompany him and prepare ourselves for our own deaths.
Plato wasn’t there himself but, in an eponymous dialogue, portrays Socrates’ friend Phaedo recounting his astonishment at the philosopher’s composure during his final hours. “Although I was witnessing the death of one who was my friend, I had no feeling of pity, for the man appeared happy both in manner and words as he died nobly and without fear” (Phaedo, 58e). So what did Socrates do? Well, he acted normally. He saw his persecutors, the men responsible for his death, as simply misguided rather than hateful. The Enchiridion of Epictetus makes a point of concluding with a remarkable quotation attributed to him: “Anytus and Meletus [who brought the charges] can kill me, but they cannot harm me.” (Obi-wan Kenobi echoes this in the movie Star Wars!)
In prison, awaiting execution, Socrates spent his final hours debating amiably with his friends about philosophy. Given the proximity of his own demise, he chose to explore the question of what happens to the soul after death, coolly examining several possibilities while keeping an open mind, tolerant of uncertainty. More importantly, he explains his view that philosophy is essentially a lifelong “meditation on death” (melete thanatou), as the reason for his surprising indifference. He says that those who practice philosophy in the right way are constantly training for death, and true philosophers fear dying least of all men (Phaedo, 67e). The “contemplation of death” therefore emerged right at the most dramatic moment in the birth of Western philosophy, spoken at the heart of what Socrates called his philosophical swansong. When the time came, he calmly drank the poison and waited to die, something he’d clearly reconciled himself to, and faced with supreme equanimity and an attitude of philosophical curiosity.
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Psychotherapy and philosophy (part 2)
Psychotherapy and philosophy (part 2)
Link to Karnac blog.
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Philosophy and psychotherapy (part 1)
Philosophy and psychotherapy (part 1)
Link to article on Karnac blog.