Maverick Philosopher

Epictetus and His World

"A Substack devoted to exploring the historical context of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus."  By Erlend MacGillivray. Looks interesting.

An entry of mine: The Uselessness of Stoicism in the Face of Death

Can You Get Through the Next Hour?

The Stoic method of division. At Substack.

Downplay Both

If you downplay your wins, downplay your losses. The pain of defeat is worse than the pleasure of victory is good. But you have the power  to regard them as equal. In some measure the pain of loss can be lessened. The Stoic therapy is no cure, but it is a palliative. If our predicament is a splitting headache, said therapy is a couple of aspirin. Take it and them for what they are worth.

Louis Lavelle on the Stoic Wisdom

Substack latest.

I am a lover of the Stoics. Why waste time on New Age hucksters when one can read Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius? But while the Stoics can take us a good stretch down the road to wisdom, they cannot bring us to the end — a fact long appreciated by first-rate minds. In late antiquity, Aurelius Augustinus offered a critique of the Stoics in Book XIX, Chapter 4 of The City of God, a critique worthy of being called classical. We will have to examine that critique one of these days. But today I want to draw your attention to some passages from Chapter 10, Section 4 of Louis Lavelle's The Dilemma of Narcissus (Allen & Unwin, 1973, tr. Gairdner):

Read the rest.

Can Rigorous Philosophy be Therapeutic?

Is philosophical analysis relevant to life as she is lived? 

Richard Sorabji:

Stoic cognitive therapy consists of a package which is in part a philosophical analysis of what the emotions are and in part a battery of cognitive devices for attacking those aspects of emotion which the philosophical analysis suggests can be attacked. The devices are often not philosophical and are often shared with other schools. But I believe it is wrong to suppose that they are doing all the work. The work is done by the package and the philosophical analysis is an essential part of the package. Admittedly somebody who just wanted to be treated passively as the patient of a Stoic therapist would not have to understand the philosophical analysis. But anyone who wants to be able to deal with the next emotional crisis that comes along and the next needs to learn how to treat themselves and for this the philosophical analysis of emotion is essential. What is under discussion here is the role of philosophical analysis as relevant to life.

I am indebted to Bernard Williams not only for expressing a diametrically opposite view but for discussing it with me both orally and in print.¹ His case demands the most careful consideration. His claim . . . is that rigorous philosophy cannot be therapeutic.

Read more.

Stoic Advice

KNOW IN ADVANCE that people will respond to you in the most diverse ways, favorably, with hostility, indifferently, in every way. Do not be surprised or much affected. Take as much of it as you can with equanimity. Observe their antics  with detachment.  Observe as well your emotional responses. 

Treat feelings and emotions as they arise  as interesting objects of study.  Holding them at mental arm's length, objectifying them, we lessen their grip on us.

The Uselessness of Stoicism in the Face of Death

Substack latest.

Augustine Against the Stoics

Today, August 28th, is the Feast of St. Augustine on the Catholic calendar.  In honor of the Bishop of Hippo I pull a quotation from his magisterial City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 4:

And I am at a loss to understand how the Stoic philosophers can presume to say that these are no ills, though at the same time they allow the wise man to commit suicide and pass out of this life if they become so grievous that he cannot or ought not to endure them. But such is the stupid pride of these men who fancy that the supreme good can be found in this life, and that they can become happy by their own resources, that their wise man, or at least the man whom they fancifully depict as such, is always happy, even though he become blind, deaf, dumb, mutilated, racked with pains, or suffer any conceivable calamity such as may compel him to make away with himself; and they are not ashamed to call the life that is beset with these evils happy. O happy life, which seeks the aid of death to end it? If it is happy, let the wise man remain in it; but if these ills drive him out of it, in what sense is it happy? Or how can they say that these are not evils which conquer the virtue of fortitude, and force it not only to yield, but so to rave that it in one breath calls life happy and recommends it to be given up? For who is so blind as not to see that if it were happy it would not be fled from? And if they say we should flee from it on account of the infirmities that beset it, why then do they not lower their pride and acknowledge that it is miserable?  

Companion posts: The Stoic Ideal and Christian Stoicism.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Philosophical Justification for a Drink or Two

From time to time  it is perhaps appropriate that we should relax a little the bonds that tether us to the straight and narrow.  A fitting apologia for a bit of indulgence and even overindulgence  is found in Seneca, On Tranquillity of Mind, XVII, 8-9, tr. Basore:

At times we ought to reach even the point of intoxication, not drowning ourselves in drink, yet succumbing to it; for it washes away troubles, and stirs the mind from its very depths and heals its sorrow just as it does certain ills of the body; and the inventor of wine is not called the Releaser [Liber, Bacchus] on account of the license it gives to the tongue, but because it frees the mind from bondage to cares and emancipates it and gives it new life and makes it bolder in all that it attempts. But, as in freedom, so in wine there is a wholesome moderation.

Sed ut libertatis ita vini salubris moderatio est.

. . .

Yet we ought not to do this often, for fear that the mind may contract an evil habit; nevertheless there are times when it must be drawn into rejoicing and freedom, and gloomy sobriety must be banished for a while.

Amos Milburn, One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer

The Champs, Tequila.  Arguably unique in that its lyrics consist of exactly one trisyllabic word.

Electric Flag, Wine.  Great video of the late Mike Bloomfield and his Gibson Les Paul in their prime, at the Monterey Pop Festival, 1967.  Definitive proof that a Jew can play the blues. Cultural appropriation at its finest. We all could profit from more cultural appropriation, blacks especially. Think what they could learn from the kike, the chink, and the honkey, not to mention the dago, the guinea, the greaseball, and the wop. 

Canned Heat, Whisky-Headed Woman.

Tommy McClennan, Whisky-Headed Woman, 1939

Doors, Whisky Bar

Buck Owens, Cigarettes, Whisky, and Wild, Wild Women

Cigarettes are a blot on the whole human race
A man is a monkey with one in his face
So gather 'round friends and listen to your brother
A fire on one end, a fool on the other.

Ramblin' Jack Elliot's version

What are you drinking? I'm having me a Whisky Highball, classic, and simplicity itself: ginger ale and your favorite whisky. Mine tonight is Canada Dry ginger ale and Jim Beam bourbon.  

Addendum 9/16

David G. writes,

Back when I was working for Google and making crap loads of money, I started sampling high-end bourbon and scotch. Maybe I'm just not a connoisseur, but in my judgement, although some of the 12-year-old Glen's were marginally better than Jack Daniels, none of the bourbons were, and there were several high-end whiskeys that were noticeably worse than Jack, so now that I'm poor, I really don't mind going back to my old friend Jack.

Also, as I'm sure you are aware, you can't post a list of songs on the internet and not have someone tell you you missed some. One you probably know:

EmmyLou Harris, Two More Bottles of Wine

and one you probably don't, unless you follow local Arizona bands:

Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, Jack vs. Jose.

Jack is good enough for me, too, and so is Jose Cuervo Gold, and if you are mixing these bad boys, not with each other mind you, but with, say, ginger ale or tonic water respectively, then there is no call to shell out for the top-shelf hooch which is outrageously overpriced. You don't always get what you pay for.  If a snob challlenges your judgment, Dave, arrange a blind taste test.

Fratello Pepito recommends The Four Deuces, White Port Lemon Juice, 1956.

Stoicism Nolens Volens

One innocent of Epictetus and Seneca may yet become a Stoic of sorts just by living, and the more so the longer he lives.

Courage Under Fire

Putting Epictetus to the Test by James Bond Stockdale

The Uselessness of Stoicism in the Face of Death

Josef Pieper, Death and Immortality (Herder and Herder, 1969), p.101:

But the profound discord and hidden infirmity, with which the Stoic doctrine was already infected at its root in classical times, is nowhere revealed so baldly as in its attitude toward death. There is nothing surprising about this. The maxim not to let our hearts be affected and shaken by anything may on occasion be quite worthy of respect; but it must become absurd in the face of an event whose whole importance consists in shaking to the very depths not only the energies of our soul, but our existence itself.

The Stoics teach that there are things that are in our power, and things that are not. The flood that sweeps away my house is not in my power; but my response to the flood is. I can make myself miserable by blaming other people, from the president on down; or I can limit my suffering by taking control of my own mind. Your insulting me is not in my power; but whether or not I let it affect me is in my power. 

The Stoics had a very important insight into the mind's power to regulate itself. When you really understand their point it can come as a revelation. I was once thinking of a dead relative and how he had wronged me. I began to succumb to negative thoughts, but caught myself and suddenly realized that I am doing it. In other words, I am allowing these negative thoughts to arise and I have the power to blot them out. The incident was years in the past, and the malefactor was long dead. So the present mental perturbation was entirely my own creation. My sudden realization of this — aided no doubt by my reading of Stoic and other wisdom literature — caused the disturbance to vanish.

In short, the Stoics discerned the mind's god-like power to regulate itself and master, rather than be mastered by, its thoughts. They saw that, within certain limits, we create the quality of our lives. Within limits, we can make ourselves miserable and we can make ourselves blessed. There is an inner citadel into which one can retreat, and where a very real peace can be enjoyed -- assuming that one is willing to practice, rather than merely read about, the Stoic precepts.

The fundamental Stoic project, in the words of Pierre Hadot, is "the delimitation of our own sphere of liberty as an impregnable islet of autonomy, in the midst of the vast river of events and of Destiny." (The Inner Citadel, p. 83) We can beat a retreat to the inner citadel, the autonomous true self, the soul, the ruling principle (hegemonikon).

As useful as Stoic therapeutics is for everyday life, it is useless as soteriology.  It can calm the soul, but not save it. For while the ruling principle has a god-like power to control its attitudes toward the blows of fate, it is not a god. It has no control over its own nature and existence. The Stoics leave us in the lurch in the face of death.

Pieper, then, is right. Death is not an external event that can be kept at mental arm's length and calmly contemplated from an inner 'safe space.' For no human space is safe from death.

I can to a certain extent identify with the hegemonikon or guiding element within me which stands above the fray, observing it. I am that ruling element, that transcendental witness. But I am also this indigent body, this wholly exposed mass of frailties. And try as I might, I cannot dissociate myself from it. The ideal of the Sage who negotiates with perfect equanimity fortune and misfortune alike is unattainable by us. In the end, the precepts and practices of Stoicism are unavailing.

We cannot save ourselves via the path of political activism as many 20th century Communists learned the hard way. But a wholly self-reliant quietism is also a dead-end whether Stoic or Buddhist. We cannot be lamps unto ourselves. If salvation is to be had, it must come from Elsewhere. Nur ein Gott kann uns retten, "Only a God can save us," as Heidegger said in his Spiegel-interview near the end of his life. 

Unnecessary Conversation Avoided

Whether it is haiku or not, it is 17 syllables, and a good addition to the Stoic's armamentarium:

Avoid the near occasion
Of unnecessary conversation.

Avoiding the near occasion is not always practicable or even reasonable, but pointless conversation itself is best avoided if one values one's peace of mind.  For according to an aphorism of mine:

Peace of mind is sometimes best preserved by refraining from giving others a piece of one's mind. 

The other day a lady asked me if I had watched the Republican debate.  I said I had. She then asked me what I had thought of it.  I told her, "I don't talk politics with people I don't know extremely well."  To which her response was that she is not the combative type. She followed that with a comment to the effect that while in a medico's waiting room recently she amused herself by listening to some men talking politics, men she described as 'bigots.'

I then knew what I had earlier surmised: she was a liberal.  I congratulated myself on my self-restraint.  At that point I excused myself and wished her a good day.

Companion post: Safe Speech.  "No man speaketh safely but he that is glad to hold his peace. " (Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Chapter XX.)

Related articles

Lichtenberg on Religion and Stoicism

Undocumented Workers and Illegal Aliens

Self Control and Respect for Authority

Between the Inhuman and the Unphilosophical

It is inhuman to care not at all about the praise of one's fellows, but unphilosophical to care much.

Why Control Negative Thoughts About Other People?

Negative thoughts are of the other, but in oneself.  They cannot harm what they are of, but they can pollute and disturb what they are in.

Lichtenberg on Religion and Stoicism

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books, tr. R. J. Hollingdale, New York Review Books, 1990, p. 112, Notebook G, Aph. #24:

To make man as religion wants him to be resembles the undertaking of the Stoics: it is only another grade of the impossible.

I agree completely with Herr Lichtenberg that the Stoic ideal is an impossible one. 

The Stoic sage would be as impassible as God is impassible. But here's something to think about: Jesus on the cross died in agony like a man, even though, if he was God, he could have realized the Stoic ideal.

What is the lesson? Perhaps that to be impassible is for us impossible, and so no ideal at all.

What Lichtenberg overlooks is that while Stoicism is a self-help therapeutic, religion, or at least Christianity, is not: no Christian who understands his doctrine fancies that he is able by his own power to effect genuine, deep-going, and lasting self-improvement.

What Lichtenberg fails to appreciate is that what is impossible for us, both individually and collectively, is not impossible with divine assistance.

If you deny the possibility of divine assistance, then you ought to abandon the project of ameliorating in any truly fundamental way the human condition: just accept it as it is, else you may end up like the Communists who murdered 100 million in the 20th century alone in quest of their u-topia.

Related articles

Why Lichtenberg is not on Facebook

If You Understood Me, You Would Agree with Me!

Still Perfect After All These Years

Georg Lichtenberg, Aphoristically, on the Freedom of the Will, with Pedantic Commentary

Accepts the Apostle's Creed, Balks at the Athanasian Creed: Second-Class Christian?

The Stoic Insight and Its Limits

Within limits we have the power to control our minds, our moods, our responses to people and things, and in consequence our happiness.  Happiness is in some measure made or unmade in the mind.  We all know people who make themselves miserable by their refusal to practice very elementary mental hygiene.  Just as I can let myself be annoyed by someone's remark or behavior, I can refuse to let myself be annoyed or affected. The trouble, however, is that this power of detachment is limited.  What's more,  it must be developed by protracted thought and practice, a fact that requires that one be well-endowed and well-placed -- facts not in one's control. I am in control of my responses to the world's bad actors and unfavorable circumstances, but not in control of the circumstances in which alone I can develop the Stoic's self-therapeutic armamentarium. I have the leisure, inclination, and aptitude to pursue Stoic and other spiritual exercises.  But how many do?  I can't see that a solution that leaves most out in the cold is much of a solution.

The Stoic wisdom  may not take us far, but where it takes us is a worthwhile destination.  In the end, however, Augustine is right: it is no final solution.  Wretchedness partially and temporarily alleviated, and by some only, is no satisfactory answer to the wretchedness inscribed in our nature.  Of course, it doesn't follow from this that there is a satisfactory answer.

Mutatis mutandis,  the above applies to Buddhist self-therapeutics as well.

Related articles

Happiness Maxims (2013 Version)

Augustine Against the Stoics

Man's Greatness Deducible From his Wretchedness

Try being a Stoic for a week?

Augustine Against the Stoics

Today, August 28th, is the Feast of St. Augustine on the Catholic calendar.  In honor of the Bishop of Hippo I pull a quotation from his magisterial City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 4:

And I am at a loss to understand how the Stoic philosophers can presume to say that these are no ills, though at the same time they allow the wise man to commit suicide and pass out of this life if they become so grievous that he cannot or ought not to endure them. But such is the stupid pride of these men who fancy that the supreme good can be found in this life, and that they can become happy by their own resources, that their wise man, or at least the man whom they fancifully depict as such, is always happy, even though he become blind, deaf, dumb, mutilated, racked with pains, or suffer any conceivable calamity such as may compel him to make away with himself; and they are not ashamed to call the life that is beset with these evils happy. O happy life, which seeks the aid of death to end it? If it is happy, let the wise man remain in it; but if these ills drive him out of it, in what sense is it happy? Or how can they say that these are not evils which conquer the virtue of fortitude, and force it not only to yield, but so to rave that it in one breath calls life happy and recommends it to be given up? For who is so blind as not to see that if it were happy it would not be fled from? And if they say we should flee from it on account of the infirmities that beset it, why then do they not lower their pride and acknowledge that it is miserable?  

Companion posts: The Stoic Ideal and Christian Stoicism.

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The Insolubility of Philosophical Problems: The Augustine Story Adapted

Happiness Maxims (2013 Version)

Captain of My Soul but not Master of my Fate

William Ernest Henley's Invictus ends as follows:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.      

Half-right, say I.  I am the captain of the ship of soul, my soul; I control rudder and sails and chart my course.  But I am not the master of the sea or the wind or the monsters of the deep or the visibility of the stars by which I steer, or the stars themselves. 

Nor am I the master of that which I control, my soul.  That I am a soul is beyond my control.

And so my captaincy, sovereign in its own domain, and undeniable there, is bound round and denied by conditions and contingencies beyond my control. 

I am not the master of my fate; at most I am the master of my attitude to it. 

 

 

Related articles

To Hell With Modern Poetic Sensibility

The Stoic Speaks

Love can turn to hate, and hate to love.  But an indifference well-cultivated remains indifference.  Let it be a benign indifference.

The Emersonian Travel Passage in Seneca

In a previous complaint about the travails of travel, I quoted a line from Emerson's "Self-Reliance": "Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places." I claimed that the thought was Seneca's before it was Emerson's. In the meantime the passage has been located in my hardcopy of the Loeb Classical Library, no. 75 (Seneca IV, Epistle XXVIII ad Lucilium, trans. R. M. Gummere, p. 199):

     Though you may cross vast spaces of sea, and though, as our Vergil
     (Aeneid, iii. 72) remarks, "Lands and cities are left astern, your
     faults will follow you whithersoever you travel." Socrates made the
     same remark to one who complained; he said: "Why do you wonder that
     globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take
     yourself with you? The reason that set you wandering is ever at
     your heels."

     Licet vastum traieceris mare, licet, ut ait Vergilius noster,
     "Terraeque urbesque recedant, sequentur te, quocumque perveneris,
     vitia." Hoc videm quaerenti cuidam Socrates ait: "Quid miraris
     nihil tibi peregrinationes prodesse, cum te circumferas? Premit te
     eadem causa, quae expulit."

Can What Is Impossible to Achieve be an Ideal for Us?

In The Stoic Ideal, I stated that the Stoic ideal is "is for us impossible, and so no ideal at all."   The ideal of the Stoic sage is the attainment of a state of god-like impassibility by means of a retreat into the inner citadel of the self, a retreat  of such a nature that one is no longer affected -- unless the sage wants to be affected -- by anything not in his power.  My double-barreled thesis, aphoristically put, is that (i) Stoic impassibility is for us humans an impossibility, and thus (ii)  cannot be an ideal for beings of our constitution. In illustration of my thesis I adduced Jesus on the cross:  Jesus died in agony like a man, even though, if he was God, he could have realized the Stoic ideal.  Of course my argument was not the following:

1. Christianity is true and Jesus is our Exemplar
2. Jesus did not exhibit on the cross or elsewhere the behavior of a Stoic sage
Therefore
3. The Stoic ideal cannot be our ideal.

I did not argue this way because this is not the way philosophers qua philosophers argue. They argue from premises that do not rest on faith.  My argument was this:

4. What is not in our power to achieve cannot be an ideal for us.
5. Stoic impassibiity is not in our power to achieve.
Therefore
3. The Stoic ideal cannot be our ideal. 

The evidence for (5) is overwhelming.  I have never met a Stoic sage, and neither have you.  Some people are more stoic than others, and there are some Stoic philosophers about; but a philosopher is not the same as a sage.  A philosopher is a mere aspirant, a seeker of wisdom; a sage has reached the goal.

The background assumption, (4), is open to question. I have deployed this principle in other contexts, and it seems to me to be a sound one.  It is a generalization of the 'ought' implies 'can' principle:  if I morally ought to do X, then it must be in my power to do X.  Contrapositively, if it is not in my power to do X, then I have no moral obligation to do X.   My principle is a generalization of the familiar Kantian principle because it covers not only the obligatory but also the supererogatory.  So I call it the Generalized 'Ought' Implies 'Can' Principle.  Roughly, an action or state is supererogatory if it is good to do or achieve but not bad to leave undone or unachieved.   But an astute  reader took issue with my principle that genuine ideals must be achievable: 

I wonder, do you really want to discriminate against ideals that may be practically impossible for us to achieve?

Take anamartia. Errorlessness. Every time I go out on the tennis court I aim for an errorless set & match. Never gotten close. Every time I write a long document (under time pressure) I try for an errorless document, but there are always some mistakes & typos. I don't want to back off and accept a certain error rate as OK. It isn't OK. In principle and ideally I could be errorless and that's what I want to be. That ideal motivates me. I keep trying. I am not discouraged.

It is not clear that this is a counterexample to my principle.  The reader says that he "could be errorless" in his slinging of words or hitting of balls.  If that means that he has the ability to be errorless, then I say that errorlessness is a genuine ideal for him, even if he has never yet achieved errorlessness.  (Something can be achievable by a person even if it has never been achieved by that person.)  Surely my man ought to strive to perform to the very best of his abilities.  If 'ought'  is too strong, then I say his striving to perform to the best of his abilities is better than his not so striving.  Either way, errorlessness is a genuine ideal for him.  It is a genuine ideal for him because it is achievable by him.  But he said, "in principle and ideally."  Those are vague phrases in need of analysis.

To be errorless in principle could mean that a) there is no narrowly-logical or broadly-logical bar to his being errorless; b) there is no nomological bar to his being errorless; c) both (a) and (b).  Clearly, errorlessness is possible for my reader  in either or both of these senses.  Neither the laws of logic nor the laws of physics rule out his being errorless.  But satisfying the logical and nomological conditions  does not suffice to make errorlessness a genuine ideal for him.  For that more is needed: he must have the ability to be errorless and be in circumstances in which his abilities can be exercised.

So I stick to my claim that nothing can be a genuine ideal for a person unless it is concretely achievable by that person given his actual abilities and circumstances and not merely achievable 'in principle' by that person.

It may help if we distinguish two senses of 'ideal.'  In one sense of the term, any desirable goal that one sets for himself is an ideal.   But that is a use of 'ideal' so loose as to be useless.  Suppose I desire to slice two hours off my marathon time the next time I run that distance.  In one sense, that would be an 'ideal' time for me.  But in the strict sense in which I am using the word, such an accomplishment is not achievable by me and so no ideal for me at all.  But it may be an ideal for you.

I am tempted to insist  that (4) is a self-evident practical principle, as self-evident as the principle of which it is the generalization. I rather doubt that I can prove it using premises more evident than it, but talking around it a bit may help. 

Ideals must be realizable if they are to be ideals.  The ideal 'points' to a possible realization.  If that be denied then it is being denied that the ideal stands in relation to the real when the ideal has its very sense in contradistinction to the real.  At this point I could bring in analogies, though analogies seldom convince.  The possible is possibly actual.  If you say X is possible but not possibly actual, then I say you don't understand the notion of possibility.  Or consider dispositions.  If a glass is disposed to shatter if suitably struck, then it must be possible for it to shatter.  Analogously, if such-and-such is an ideal for a person, then it must be possible  -- and not just logically or nomologically -- for the person to realize that ideal.

I believe this is an important topic because having the wrong ideals is worse than having no ideals at all.  Many think that to be idealistic is good.  But surely it is not good without qualification.  Think of Nazi ideals, Communist ideals, leftist ideals and of their youthful and and earnest and sincere proponents.  Those are wrongheaded ideals, and some of them are wrongheaded because not realizable.  The classless society; the dictatorship of the proletariat; the racially pure society; the society in which everyone is made materially equal by the power of the state.  Ideals like these cannot be achieved, and if the attempt is made terrible evils will be the upshot.  The Commies broke a lot of eggs in the 20th century (100 million by some estimates) but still didn't achieve their fabulous and impossible omelet. 

Their ideals were not realizable, not warranted by the actual facts of human nature.

I suggest the same is true of the ideal of Stoic impassibility:  it is not warranted by the actual facts of human nature.  This is not to say that most of us would not be a lot better if we were more stoic and detached in our responses to what is not in our control.

Augustine Against the Stoics

Today, August 28th, is the Feast of St. Augustine on the Catholic calendar.  In honor of the Bishop of Hippo I pull a quotation from his magisterial City of God, Book XIX, Chapter 4:

And I am at a loss to understand how the Stoic philosophers can presume to say that these are no ills, though at the same time they allow the wise man to commit suicide and pass out of this life if they become so grievous that he cannot or ought not to endure them. But such is the stupid pride of these men who fancy that the supreme good can be found in this life, and that they can become happy by their own resources, that their wise man, or at least the man whom they fancifully depict as such, is always happy, even though he become blind, deaf, dumb, mutilated, racked with pains, or suffer any conceivable calamity such as may compel him to make away with himself; and they are not ashamed to call the life that is beset with these evils happy. O happy life, which seeks the aid of death to end it? If it is happy, let the wise man remain in it; but if these ills drive him out of it, in what sense is it happy? Or how can they say that these are not evils which conquer the virtue of fortitude, and force it not only to yield, but so to rave that it in one breath calls life happy and recommends it to be given up? For who is so blind as not to see that if it were happy it would not be fled from? And if they say we should flee from it on account of the infirmities that beset it, why then do they not lower their pride and acknowledge that it is miserable?

The Stoic Ideal

The Stoic sage would be as impassible as God is impassible. But here's something to think about: Jesus on the cross died in agony like a man, even though, if he was God, he could have realized the Stoic ideal.

What is the lesson? Perhaps that to be impassible is for us impossible, and so no ideal at all.

Addendum 8/26:  Leo Mollica supplies this appropriate quotation  from Malebranche's The Search after Truth (Bk. II, Pt. iii, Ch. 4; tr. Lennon and Olscamp):

Epicurus was right in saying that offenses were bearable by a wise man. But Seneca was wrong in saying that wise men cannot even be offended.... Rather, let Christians learn from their Master that the impious are capable of hurting them, and that good men are sometimes subjected to these impious ones by the order of Providence. When one of the officers of the High Priest struck Jesus Christ, this wise man of the Christians, infinitely wise, and even as powerful as He is wise, confessed that this servant was capable of wounding him. He is not angered, He is not vengeful like Cato, He pardons, as having been truly wronged. He could have been vengeful and destroyed His enemies, but He suffered with a humble and modest patience injurious to no one, not even to this servant who had wronged Him.

I Stub My Toe

I just stubbed a bare toe on the oaken leg of my computer table. But it took a second or two after the moment of impact for the pain to 'register.' So I philosophized: if there was no pain at the moment of   impact when the (minor) damage was done, but there is pain now after the fact, then this pain is of no use to me. It's only a sensation. To hell with it. It has nothing to do with me.

"It's only a sensation." This little reminder is a handy addition to the Stoic's pharmacia, though it is admittedly no panacea. It can help us buck up under some of life's stresses and strains.  Stoicism may not take us very far, but where it does take us is a place worth  visiting.

Christian Stoicism

Richard Wurmbrand, From Torture to Triumph (Monarch, 1991), p. 5:

     A brother who had been terribly tortured by the Communist police
     shared the same prison cell with me and told the following incident:

     I once saw an impressive scene in a circus. A sharpshooter set out
     to demonstrate his skill. In the arena was his wife with a burning
     candle on her head. From a distance he shot the candle so that it
     fell, leaving his wife unharmed.

     Later I asked her, "Were you afraid?" She replied, "Why should I
     be? He aimed at the candle, not at me."

     I thought about this when I was under torture. Why should I be
     afraid of the torturers? They don't beat me. They beat my body. My
     'me,' my real being, is Christ. I was seated with him in the
     heavenly places. This -- my real person -- could not be touched by
     them.

Seneca on Books and the Library at Alexandria

De Tranquillitate Animi, IX, 4 (tr. Basore):

What is the use of having countless books and libraries, whose titles their owners can scarcely read through in a whole lifetime? The learner is not instructed, but burdened by the mass of them, and it is much better to surrender yourself to a few authors than to wander through many.

Well said. But Seneca continues with something that strikes some as dubious:

Forty thousand books were burned at Alexandria; let someone else praise this library as the most noble monument to the wealth of kings, as did Titus Livius, who says that it was the most distinguished achievement of the good taste and solicitude of kings. There was no "good taste" or "solicitude" about it, but only learned luxury -- nay, not even "learned," since they had collected the books, not for the sake of learning, but to make a show, just as many who lack even a child's knowledge of letters use books, not as the tools of learning, but as decorations for the dining room.

It was only for learned luxury? The books were collected non in studium sed in spectaculum? And only forty thousand were burned? See here. Excerpt:

The actual number of books destroyed that Seneca gives is matter of some controversy that we will need to briefly address. In ancient manuscripts it is common for large numbers to be expressed as a dot placed above the numeral for each power of ten. Clearly in copying it is easy to make a mistake with the number of dots and errors by a factor of ten are frequent. That may have happened in the case of On the Tranquillity of the Mind. The manuscript from Monte Cassino actually reads 40,000 books but this is usually corrected to 400,000 by editors as other sources such as Orosius give this figure for the number of scrolls destroyed. I have not seen the manuscript, of course, so do not know if this way the number is expressed. However, even if it was given in words the difference between 40,000 and 400,000 is also pretty small. I propose therefore that the number given by Seneca, and indeed all other ancient sources, should be ruled as inadmissible as evidence because we cannot be sure of what it was originally.

Seneca and the Consolations of Chess and Philosophy

A correspondent reminds me of the following passage from Seneca's De Tranquillitate XIV, 6-7, tr. Basore:

Will you believe that Canus spent the ten intervening days before his execution in no anxiety of any sort? What the man said, what he did, how tranquil he was, passes all credence. He was playing chess when the centurion who was dragging off a whole company of victims to death ordered that he also be summoned. Having been called, he counted the pawns and said to his partner: "See that after my death you do not claim falsely that you won." Then nodding to the centurion, he said, "You will bear witness that I am one pawn ahead."

A little farther down, at XIV, 10, Seneca pays Canus the ultimate tribute:

Ecce in media tempestate tranquillitas, ecce animus aeternitate dignus, qui fatuum suum in argumentum veri vocat, qui in ultimo illo gradu positus exeuntem animam percontatur nec usque ad mortem tantum sed aliquid etiam ex ipsa morte discit. Nemo diutius philosophatus est.

Here is tranquillity in the very midst of the storm, here is a mind worthy of immortality — a spirit that summons its own fate to the proof of the truth, that, in the very act of taking that one last step, questions the departing soul, and learns, not merely up to the point of death, but seeks to learn something even from death itself. No one has ever played the philosopher longer.

Epictetus Advises Imelda Marcos

Epictetus, Enchiridion, tr. E. Carter, XXXIX:

The body is to everyone the measure of the possessions proper for it, as the foot is of the shoe. If, therefore, you stop at this, you will keep the measure; but if you move beyond it, you must necessarily be carried forward, as down a precipice; as in the case of a shoe, if you go beyond its fitness to the foot, it comes first to be gilded, then purple, and then studded with jewels. For to that which once exceeds a due measure, there is no bound.

Indeed, as one may observe here.

Avoidance Always Possible

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI, 20, Loeb Classical Library no. 58, p. 141, tr. Haines:

Suppose that a competitor in the ring has gashed us with his nails and butted us violently with his head, we do not protest or take it amiss or suspect our opponent in future of foul play. Still we do keep an eye on him, not indeed as an enemy, or from suspicion of him, but with good-humoured avoidance. Act much the same way in all the other parts of life. Let us make many allowances for our fellow-athletes as it were. Avoidance is always possible, as I have said, without suspicion or hatred.

 

This is indeed Sage Advice. Avoidance is always possible and sometimes necessary if one would live well. Marcus bids us avoid, if not our "fellow-athletes," then their rude antics. But I would add to the list certain thoughts, words, and deeds.

Thoughts that weaken, demean, or are otherwise useless are best avoided. For as Marcus says in another place (V, 16), "The character of thy mind will be such as is the character of thy frequent thoughts, for the soul takes its dye from the thoughts." Would close inquiry into the particulars of Anna Nicole Smith's ill-starred life improve me?  Do I really need to know why David Carradine was found dead in Bangkok hanging from a rope?

Idle talk is another source of needless vexation. The teachable soon learn that the occasions are rife on which keeping one's mouth shut is the best policy.

The wise also avoid the vexation of unnecessary action. Having burdened yourself with boat, RV, jet ski and motorcycle, you are now both owner and owned, and you will expend your spirit in actions for the maintenance of these mere conveyances.

Seneca: Omnis Vita Servitium Est

Assume the worst.  Assume that Seneca was a hypocrite: he didn't believe what he wrote or try to live in accordance with it.  What would it matter?  How is it relevant to the fact that countless thousands, over the centuries, have derived inspiration, consolation, and strength from passages such as the following?  If a message is sound, it is sound regardless of the moral condition of the messenger.

Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, X, 4 (tr. Basore):

All life is a servitude. And so a man must become reconciled to his lot, must complain of it as little as possible, and must lay hold of whatever good it may have; no state is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find in its some consolation. . . . Apply reason to difficulties; it is possible to soften what is hard, to widen what is narrow, and burdens will press less heavily upon those who bear them skillfully.

Seneca on Leisure and Philosophy

Some say Seneca was a hypocrite.  But even if it is true, even if he did not believe or practice what he preached in his voluminous writings, what would it matter when he has bequeathed to us such gems as the following?

Of all men they alone are at leisure who take time for philosophy, they alone really live; for they are not content to be good guardians of their own lifetime only. They annex every age to their own; all the years that have gone before them are an addition to their store. Unless we are most ungrateful, all those men, glorious fashioners of holy thoughts, were born for us; for us they have prepared a way of life. By other men’s labours we are led to the sight of things most beautiful that have been wrested from darkness and brought into light; from no age are we shut out, we have access to all ages, and if it is our wish, by greatness of mind, to pass beyond the narrow limits of human weakness, there is a great stretch of time through which we may roam. We may argue with Socrates, we may doubt with Carneades, find peace with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, exceed it with the Cynics. Since nature allows us to enter into fellowship with every age, why should we not turn from this paltry and fleeting span of time and surrender ourselves with all our soul to the past, which is boundless, which is eternal, which we share with our betters? (De Brevitate Vitae, XIV, 1-2. Trans. J. W. Basore, Loeb Classical Library, vol. 254, pp. 333-335, emphasis added.)

Comment: Leisure (otium) is a concept almost universally misunderstood nowadays. It has nothing to do with hitting little white balls into holes at Leisure World, and everything to do with the disciplined use of free time in pursuit of the worthiest objects for nonutilitarian ends. Leisure in this classical sense is the basis of culture (Josef Pieper). To be able to enjoy it with a good conscience is a mark of nobility of soul. (Nietzsche).

We Annoy Ourselves

There are not a few situations in life in which we are tempted to say or think, 'Your behavior is annoying!' Thinking this, we only make ourselves more annoyed. Saying it is even worse. For then two are annoyed. Instead of saying or thinking of something external to oneself that he, she, or it is annoying, think to oneself: I am annoying myself, or I am allowing myself to become annnoyed.

Just as one enjoys oneself, one annoys oneself. Enjoyment of a thing external to oneself is enjoyment of oneself in relation to the thing. The same goes for annoyance. There is of course an objective stimulus, not in one's power. One's tablemate, for example, is slurping his soup. His slurping is not in one's power, or else not conveniently in one's power. (Shooting him only makes matters worse.) But how one responds to the slurping is within one's power.

Stoicism may not take us very far along the road to happiness, but where it takes us is worth visiting.

It goes without saying that adjusting one's attitude is the appropriate response only in some of life's difficult situations. One does not adjust one's attitude to the 'annoying' behavior of a terrorist: one literally shoots him, thereby inducing a radical attitude adjustment in him. If the shooting adversely affects one's ataraxia, too bad. Better a little less tranquillitas animi than death or submission to the religion of 'peace.' Better his being red than your being dead.

Seneca on Drinking

In this festive season it is perhaps appropriate that we should relax a little the bonds that tether us to the straight and narrow.  A fitting apologia for a bit of indulgence and even overindulgence  is found in Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind, XVII, 8-9, tr. Basore:

At times we ought to reach even the point of intoxication, not drowning ourselves in drink, yet succumbing to it; for it washes away troubles, and stirs the mind from its very depths and heals its sorrow just as it does certain ills of the body; and the inventor of wine is not called the Releaser [Liber, Bacchus] on account of the license it gives to the tongue, but because it frees the mind from bondage to cares and emancipates it and gives it new life and makes it bolder in all that it attempts. But, as in freedom, so in wine there is a wholesome moderation.

Sed ut libertatis ita vini salubris moderatio est.

. . .

Yet we ought not to do this often, for fear that the mind may contract an evil habit; nevertheless there are times when it must be drawn into rejoicing and freedom, and gloomy sobriety must be banished for a while.

Heights and Precipices: Quae Excelsa Videbantur, Praerupta Sunt

Seneca, Tranquillitate Animi, X, 5 (tr. Basore) counsels the chastening but not the extirpation of desire: 

. . . we must not send our desires upon a distant quest, but we should permit them to have access to what is near, since they do not endure to be shut up altogether. Leaving those things that either cannot be done, or can be done only with difficulty, let us pursue what lies near at hand and allures our hope, but let us be aware that they are all equally trivial, diverse outwardly in appearance, within alike vain. And let us not envy those who stand in higher places; where there are heights to be seen, there are precipices. (Emphasis added.)

I modified the last sentence of Basore's translation, substituting 'where there are heights to be seen' for 'where there appeared heights' which is bad English and appears to be a mistranslation from the Latin.

Admiration and Contempt

Often it is like this. He is not admirable; it is your unadmirable propensity to admire that confers upon him a quality he does not possess. She is not contemptible; it is your contemptible tendency to contemn that makes of her what she is not.

One ideal is to so apportion admiration and contempt that it is only the intrinsically admirable and contemptible that become the objects of these attitudes. An ideal Stoic and stricter is to regard nothing as admirable or the opposite, not even the propensities to admire and contemn. Is this what Horace meant by nil admirari?

How far should we take the mortification of desire and aversion? You could take it all the way into a world-denying asceticism. But I suspect the Sage is a man of balance. Able to control desire and aversion, he has no need to extirpate them. Why uproot a tree that you can trim and manage? You say it is messy when its blossoms fall. But before they fell were they not beautiful and fragrant? The leaves are a bother to rake, but is not the shade they afford agreeable?

The Sage can enjoy the transient in its transiency without clinging and without hankering after the absent transient. He can oppose the bad and the disagreeable without losing his equanimity or exaggerating their negativity. He neither idolizes nor demonizes.

We Annoy Ourselves

There are not a few situations in life in which we are tempted to say or think of another, 'Your behavior is annoying!' Thinking this, we only make ourselves more annoyed. Saying it is even worse. For then two are annoyed. Instead of saying or thinking of something external to oneself that he, she, or it is annoying, think to oneself: I am annoying myself, or I am allowing myself to become annnoyed.

Just as one enjoys oneself, one annoys oneself. Enjoyment of a thing external to oneself is enjoyment of oneself in relation to the thing. The same goes for annoyance. There is of course an objective stimulus, not in one's power. One's tablemate, for example, is slurping his soup. His slurping is not in one's power, or else not conveniently in one's power. (Shooting him only makes matters worse.) But how one responds to the slurping is within one's power.

Stoicism may not take us very far along the road to happiness, but where it takes us is worth visiting.

It goes without saying that adjusting one's attitude is the appropriate response only in some of life's difficult situations. One does not adjust one's attitude to the 'annoying' behavior of a terrorist: one literally shoots him, thereby inducing a radical attitude adjustment in him. If the shooting adversely affects one's ataraxia, too bad. Better a little less tranquillitas animi than death or submission to the religion of 'peace.' Better his being red than your being dead.

Alain on Keeping to the Present

Emile-Auguste Chartier (1868-1951) was a French professor of philosophy among whose students were Raymond Aron and Simone Weil. Chartier's sunny disposition, however, did not rub off on the brooding Weil. Under the pseudonym 'Alain,' Chartier published thousands of two-page essays in newspapers. Were he alive and active today he would most likely be a philosoblogger.

Speaking of the Stoics, Alain writes,

One of their arguments which I have always found good, and which has been useful to me more than once, is their concept of the past and the future. "We have only the present to bear," they said. "Neither the past not the future can harm us, since the one no longer exists and the other does not yet exist."

[. . .]

. . . keep your mind on the present; keep your mind on your life, which moves onward from minute to minute; one minute follows another; it is therefore possible to live as you are living, since you are alive. But the future terrifies me, you say. That is something you know nothing about. What happens is never what we expected; and as for your present suffering, you may be sure that it will diminish precisely because it is so intense. Everything changes, everything passes away. This maxim has often saddened us; the very least it can do is console us once in a while. (Alain on Happiness, Frederick Ungar 1973, trs. R. D. and J. E. Cottrell, pp. 144-145)

The literary merit of Alain's writing is in evidence in the concluding sentence. My only quibble is with the typically Gallic exaggeration: what happens is never what we expected? Ah, the French love of the the universal quantifier!

Companion post: Can You Get Through the Next Hour?

Can You Get Through the Next Hour?

The present can always be borne – if sliced thinly enough – and it is only the present that must be borne.

This aphorism of mine is in the Stoic spirit. It illustrates the Stoic method of division. Any process or procedure or undertaking which seems overwhelming or unbearable when surveyed as a whole can be managed if one breaks it down into its parts. Since it is not all at once, it needn't be managed and borne all at once. One does not run the marathon all at once, but stride by stride. The wise marathoner at the starting line does not remind himself that he must run the daunting distance of 26.2 miles, he just starts running. Near the end, when he is spent, he thinks only of the next step. One can always take another step, and only one step needs to be taken at each time.

Here is Pierre Hadot (The Inner Citadel, p. 133) quoting from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (XI, 3):

A seductive melody . . . you can despise it if you divide it into each of its sounds, and if you ask yourself if you are lesser than each one of them taken separately; if you are you would be filled with shame. The same thing will happen if you repeat this procedure in each figure . . . In general, then, and with the exception of virtue and its effects, remember to head as quickly as you can for the parts of a process, in order, by dividing them, to get to the point where you have contempt for them. Transpose this method, moreover, to life in its entirety.

Analysis destroys the seductiveness but also the fearfulness of processual wholes by decomposing them into temporal parts that can be easily negotiated. How will I get through this life of trial and tribulation? How will I bear up under sickness, old age, and dying? I will do it day by day, hour by hour. One can always get throught the next hour, minute, second. As Hadot puts it, "No object can make us lose our mastery over ourselves if we submit it to this method of division." (133)

There is a comparison worth exploring between the soteriological use to which Stoics put analysis and the use to which Buddhists put it, as in Milinda's Chariot. But that is a large topic for later.

Louis Lavelle on the Stoic Wisdom

I am a lover of the Stoics. Why waste time on New Age hucksters when one can read Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius? But while the Stoics can take us a good stretch down the road to wisdom, they cannot bring us to the end — a fact long appreciated by first-rate minds. In late antiquity, Aurelius Augustinus offered a critique of the Stoics in Book XIX, Chapter 4 of The City of God, a critique worthy of being called classical. We will have to examine that critique one of these days. But today I want to draw your attention to some passages from Chapter 10, Section 4 of Louis Lavelle's The Dilemma of Narcissus (Allen & Unwin, 1973, tr. Gairdner):