Are there any new books about Stoicism that stand out for you as particularly interesting? This is the situation we are living now, in the second decade of the 21th century. The early Stoics thought that there were three areas of philosophical inquiry. The starting point of any new pursuit is critical. But theyre not entirely under your control. One of my favourite exercises which does come straight out of Senecas writing and the ancient Roman tradition is this idea of taking a hot shower and then during the last few seconds turning it completely cold. It is packed with resources on Stoicismfrom more book recommendations to Stoic exercisesas well as a chapter from bestselling author Ryan Holidays book. But it strikes me that the virtue ethicists, although theyve theorised virtue, arent necessarily striving to be more virtuous. So you think its lucky to experience that? Although our focus currently is on a pandemic, we shouldnt forget that we still face the possibility of climate collapse, are under the constant threat of nuclear Armageddon, and we keep experiencing dramatic political upheavals and civil unrest. Epictetus wasa slave who became aprominent philosopher and teacher, andbecame a friend ofemperors, Epictetus was an interesting life: a slave who turns prominent philosopher and teacher, who becomes friends with emperors and is kicked out by other emperors: its fascinating. ), or for those wishing to pursue particular aspects or applications of the philosophy (Stoicism and the military, politically progressive Stoicism, and of course Stoic dating!). Back in Athens, Cleanthes (the second head of the Stoa) was apparently a good philosopher, but not a particularly engaging teacher and by the end of his career the number of students dropped off significantly. Nero committed suicidewell, in fact Nero botched his attempted suicide and it was his secretary, Epictetus master, who helped him in the end, so hes the one who killed Nero. If you can use your wealth for good, youre fine from a Stoic perspective, theres nothing wrong with that; but if you keep accumulating wealth for the sake of it, then youre definitely not a good Stoic. So yes, Stoicism is getting more popular, and it seems to be here to stay. He uses that starting point as a way to counsel his friend Lucilius, and therefore his audience at large, about moderation. For instance, he saysthis is one of my favourite quotations from the Meditations, from book two, chapter one: The ancients had a much broader conception of ethics. s.src = 'https://s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/linkcious/asset/linkcious.js'; The Moral Epistles is in some ways Senecas philosophical testament because it conveys his mature thought. There is an anecdote in the Discourses where somebody, one of his students, tells him: I heard so-and-so speaking ill of you.And Epictetus response is: Well, thats because he doesnt know me well, because otherwise he would be saying much, much worse things.. On many occasions he expresses something so clearly and profoundly that it will shake you to your core. Thats not the point. Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. So the intelligent Stoic would react with humour or simply just ignore the insult, but then he or she would go back and think:Why did my colleague object to that paper? The best way to translate this word is as magnanimity or great soul-ness. So these are psychological tricks arent they? Finally, there has been the deliberate, concerted effort of a relatively small number of people, largely coalescing around two organizations: Modern Stoicism and the Stoic Fellowship. Becker had a dedication to his students and to his career and didnt allow his physical problems to stand in his way. Presumably Nero could have just taken the property if hed wanted it anyway. He was born a slave and badly treated when he was young: his master, through either carelessness or viciousness, broke his leg, and as a result he was crippled throughout his life. It is the most accessible editioncompletely devoid of any thous and shalls. How do you react in life when things dont go your way? What is this person who is insulting me trying to tell me? What they called physics is what today we would describe as a combination of metaphysics and natural science. But what you should do, if it is at all possible, is examine them, step back for a second and say: Why am I afraid? The impediment to action advances action. What do you do then? is perhaps the only document of its kind ever made. He also adds, which is crucial I think to understanding the whole thing, that it is that fact that the door is open that gives meaning to what you do. 28 Books On Stoicism: The (Hopefully) Ultimate Reading List. Many of them are short, just a few pages long. It could be under your control if you commit suicide, couldnt it? What youre describing seems to me to be a perversion of the Stoic idea. Another one I like is called, On festivals and fasting.
Really, so you shouldnt proselytise for Stoicism? I may be doing virtue theory an injustice here, but I havent been aware of an increase in the number of virtuous people as a result of this philosophical study, but there are definitely people behaving stoically now. We know what these people did, and how they practised their philosophies. First of all, this is all very debatable, since we dont really have a lot of independent historical evidence on his life; and secondly, its a very recent development in the way we look at Seneca. It was the kind of life where you are on your deathbed, you look back and you say: Yes, that was worth it: there is not much that Im ashamed of, that was a life well-lived, not just in the sense that I thrived in terms of material possessions, but mostly I was a good person.. So for instance lets say that you are walking in the street by yourself at night and you hear a sound that doesnt feel right. Well get back to the theorist part because Im definitely not an ancient philosophy scholar, so Im not a theorist in that sense, but Im interested in Stoicism as both theory and practice for todays world. Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. Epictetus was focused on ethics, which is the third Stoic concern. Whats the main thesis of the Discourses? And then there was the ethics, which was the study of how to live your life. Lawrence Becker is a retired philosophy professor. Make sure you pick up the Gregory Hays translation from Modern Library. Yes. Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the world at the time, yet his wife was cheating on him, and his advisers were treacherous. Thats the equivalent of 200 today presumably. Musonius Rufus, Epictetus teacher, was twice exiled. So do most of our analyses of what were doing in life. I know youre both a theorist and a practitioner. Now we can read those letters and they can guide us through problems with grief, wealth, poverty, success, failure, education and so many other things. So actually the translation might be better: we are dying every day? So I did this, and the woman that was leading the excursion of course talked a lot about Nero, and she also talked a lot about Seneca. As a result, he tells me, hes been a much happier person, because a lot of things that were stressful for him, like his colleagues not thinking well of his work now just washes over him, and hes even amused by it. He put together eight volumes of the Discoursesbasically these are his handwritten notes from Epictetus lectures. So Id rather retire outside of Rome in my own villa. He used some of his great wealth to try to bribe Nero to let him retire, offering two thirds of his lands to the emperor. Some things are under your control and other things are not under your control. Just briefly, from a historical perspective: Stoicism started in Athens in the year 300, or 301 BCE in a school established by Zeno. In contrast, in the Letters to Lucilius, Seneca recognised that good ideas for living can come from diverse sources. But the colleague immediately added Yes, Im trying to decide on whether your work is just mistaken or downright evil. I know, right. But, one can make an argument, as Seneca himself does, that too much wealth becomes obscene because you become focused on the externalities at the expense of virtue. Is that the driving motivation for this kind of behaviour? Of course he didnt know he was about to die prematurely, but he was an old man already, he was in his sixties, and he knew he wouldnt live that much longer and was frank about it. Correct. ), Epictetus is the most preachy and for many, the least fun to read. Its not as if you need to know all the details about how the world works in order to figure out how to live your life. I started reading about ethics. The major Stoic interest group on Facebook now has over 82,000 members, and a number of other such groups have sprung up either for people interested in practising Stoicism locally (Italy, France, Portugal, Brazil, India, etc. I just want to read you one which is right at the beginning of the Discourses, volume 1, chapter 1.32, its an example of the dichotomy of control, but its also an example of something that immediately endeared Epictetus to me: his sense of humour. Theres no tradition of proselytising for Stoicism. If you look at just the titles of the letters, thats revealing, titles such as: On true and false friendship. ? Theyre less moral when judged by a set of conventional critiera. He started spending more time outside of Rome, and thats when he wrote the Epistles to Lucilius. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evilI can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him If you read Cicero, and if you read Epictetus himself, it becomes clear that many Stoics did believe that they had the best way, if not the only way, certainly the best way of achieving eudaimonia.
Nero refused it. The first emotional reaction you have to something, they called an impression. Exactly. The reason the Meditations have endured is because you really get a very clear sense of an interesting man who is struggling with his own limitations, as well as with the environment thats surrounding him. This is the Stoic idea of a sage, which has some affinities with Buddhism. Designed to help you cultivate strength, insight, and wisdom to live your best life. The Stoics offer us valuable strategies of thinking about and dealing with hardships that remain relevant for modern society, Massimo Pigliucci, Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York and practising Stoic, told us in 2016. So, heres the thing, the reason there was a shift between Greek Stoicism and Roman Stoicism. As he quipped to a friend, I dont care about the author if the line is good. That is the ethos of practical philosophyit doesnt matter from whom or when it came from, what matters if it helps you in your life, if only for a second. Seneca was a stoic as well, but like Marcus, he was practical and borrowed liberally from other schools. Epictetus didnt write any books; he was a teacher, in the same vein as Socrates, who made a point of not writing his ideas down. I think the Romans would definitely not go that far.
I have to die. A lot of people, not just Seneca, wrote letters that were meant both as personal letters to friends or acquaintances, but also for broader circulation.
If you get angry, for instance, at something, think: Why am I getting angry here? Ive read an account by James Stockdale who survived torture and solitary confinement during the Vietnam War after his plane was shot down without breaking down through Stoic techniques, based on his memories of having studied Epictetus. Well, now we have this book. You can see that from the fact that they spent a certain amount of timenot a lot, but a certain amount of timearguing against other schools. The reason I picked this book is because a great deal of writing by Seneca has survived, more than that of other Stoics. Seneca is often criticised, even by modern Stoics, as a somewhat ambiguous figure because despite being a self-professed Stoic he was preaching virtue at the same time that he oversaw Neros first five years in power. A lot of people who surrounded the emperor would have wanted favours, and many were treacherous; but he says: Remember, they do this because they dont know better. Seneca was a playwright: he wrote tragedies, and even influenced Shakespeare. Later on he was recalled to Rome, but refused to leave. Ok, suredeath is inevitable.
Marcus Aurelius had studied philosophy when he was young and in particular Stoicism. Of the big three (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus), Epictetus is the most preachy and for many, the least fun to read. You can only try to be healthy, and wealthy, and educated, and have a good life in the sense of externalities, but, you know, shit happens, so to speakthats not a direct quoteand Stoicism in the great part, especially Epictetus Stoicism, is about how to deal with situation where shit does actually happen. Eric Schwitzgebel did that research. Yes. I also want to say something about Becker himself as a man. The basic idea is this: yes, Stoics do have that reputation, but if you look at what they wrote and the way they actually behaved in life, they were far from emotionless. If you react just on the basis of anger, youre very likely going to make wrong decisions or act rashly; but on the other hand there are situations where you do want to cultivate a sense of indignation, a sense of justice being violated, and you do want to do something about it, and thats a positive emotionthats something that the Stoics would definitely say you should do. There are a couple of places, for instance, where he says that we can have interesting discussions about metaphysics or logic, but those discussions have to bear on specific ethical issues. And I dont either. Theres very little theoretical philosophy in Epictetus. You dont need to go for a gourmet meal, you dont need to go for really fancy cuisine, you can appreciate some good bread, or good wine and recognise that this is an incredibly enjoyable experience. These novels, he notesas with many others from West and Central Africaare united by a common search for identity in post-colonial Africa. It was really amazing. He was a senator, and owned land all over the Roman Empire. The Enchiridion, the Handbook, is the short version that Arrian put together by picking the best bits from the Discourses. Arrian was probably about 23 or so when he did this. Their logic we would still call logic today, but for them it included epistemology, cognitive science, and psychology. As I said before, I came to philosophy late in life, other than my early bout in high school, and I love the field. The chapter titles are topics that Epictetus debated with his students, and these topics were often very practical. So he says we do certain things, or this is something that happened to us. Marcus wrote this over the course of a few years when he was on the German frontier fighting the Marcomanni revolt against Rome. Over the last few years archaeologists here in Rome have opened it up. It is packed with resources on Stoicismfrom more book recommendations to Stoic exercisesas well as a chapter from bestselling author Ryan Holidays book, The Obstacle Is The Way. It is not so great to read through from beginning to end for this reason. The reason for this is interesting. And speaking of Epictetus, my newest book is coming out in the UK on 9/17, with the title The Stoic Guide to a Happy Life (American title: A Field Guide to a Happy Life), and it is a complete rewrite of one of ancient Stoicisms most important texts, Epictetuss Enchiridion (or Manual). s.onload = s.onreadystatechange = function() { They are wonderful authors, but it didnt click with me. The very first book that I read after this renewed interest in Stoicism was The Discourses of Epictetus. Theres nothing like self-flagellation in Stoicism. He makes mistakes, hes a human figure, hes somebody you can relate to but who constantly strives to do better: he constantly strives to do the right thing. Thats like a kind of martial art: if you imagine in judo, somebody moving in a certain direction, well you help them carry on a bit and trip them up in the process. He updates a number of aspects of Stoic philosophy. There is very good empirical evidence that this actually helps significantly. His idea is that you need to take seriously the findings of cognitive science, and update some things, and have a more modest view of human rationality; but as long as theres a core of your rationality, as long as its possible for human beings to think rationally and engage in the kind of reflective exercises that Epictetus was teaching to his students, then an updated version of Stoicism is possible and desirable. The way youve described Marcus Aurelius, hes trying to tell himself that hes not going to be bothered by these people, but you sense, reading between the lines, that he probably will be. If you do things in anger, youre very likely going to do things that you regret. Stoicism is no difference. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. In the early letters, over and over he ends with what he calls a gift for Lucilius, and its always a quotation from somebody else, a quotation from Epicurus, or whoever. Then there is an essay on old age, for instance, on how to age gracefully and deal with it if youre lucky enough to live to experience that. One of the reasons Stoicism came back in modern times is because these tricks are useful. He told me: It used to be that I got irritated, it used to be that I started my day miserably because of somebody doing something obnoxious on the subway, but once I started practising these things and sort of readjusting my mental expectations, I just saw these things as the kind of behaviour that really cannot touch me..
The Stoics also had fictional role models, ancient heroes and demigods like Hercules. Personally, I prefer the Penguin translations, but Ive tried a handful of others and found the differences to be relatively negligible. He lived in Nicopolis to a ripe age of 80, which for the time was remarkable. He was a slave, born in Hierapolis, which is modern Pamukkale in Turkey, which at that time was a Greek city and became a Roman colony in the late 1st century/early 2nd century. The book is structured so that at the end of each chapter there is a commentary, and the commentary is very technical and is where he goes back to the original sources and says things like, I made this point in the chapter because its relevant to these other thinkers, these other quotations. Keep track of how well you respond to the challenge, even using a self-scoring rubric, and when you judge the challenge to be over give yourself a thorough evaluation. There were other examples too: Cato the Younger, for example, who was a famous political opponent of Julius Caesar during the Roman Republic; Seneca refers to him as a sage and as a role model. Its a hands-on book, meant to be written on, and the exercises are grouped according to the three disciplines of the second century Stoic Epictetus: desire (i.e., how to reorient our priorities), action (i.e., how to deal with other people), and assent (i.e., how to improve our judgment). He was a very interesting figure.
Every year, the Walter Scott Prize highlights the best new historical novels. Before I met him, I thought of him as just the author of an academic book on Stoicism. What they did counsel was apatheia. Its difficult, but not impossible to emulate the sage. There was an open market of philosophical ideas, and to some extent, people just gravitated to one school or another depending on either the fame of the teacher or the appeal of the teaching. The contrast between anger and justice is exactly this: that anger will cloud your judgement, even if it is justifiable anger, even if there is a good reason to be angry at something. They were personal correspondence, but when scholars look at the way the text is structured, they are convinced they were meant for publication.
That doesnt mean he isnt brilliant. It strikes me that there was this big movement in philosophy to reinstate virtue ethics, starting in the 1950s with Elizabeth Anscombe and various others saying that weve been caught up in an impoverished view of what ethics is, so lets go back to the ancient Greeks, and particularly to Aristotle. He had a major Stoic for a teacher who gave him a copy of Epictetus Discourses. Then I went beyond Aristotle and read what little there is available on Epicureanism and some of the other Hellenistic schools of virtue ethics. Learn more about the meaning behind Daily Stoic's most popular medallion.
Epictetus says exactly this in the Discourses, he says: I used to go round responding humorously to people and then I got my nose broken. And he adds: so I dont do it anymore, I just walk away.. Now since youve mentioned Seneca, maybe we should move onto book four? For Christians, if you think about it, they have their role modelJesuswho is, by definition, an impossible role model to emulate: hes a god. That is what really appealed to me. Its an exercise in gratitude which is a basic Stoic practice: you have to remind yourself of the people you are grateful to because they are important in your life. Its a sort of philosophical judo, what Bill practises. But theres more to be said. The insult itself is not, but how you react to it is up to you. Beyond that, it reminds you that you can deal with these kind of things. But what about this caricature of Stoicism that the way you achieve independence from the contingencies of life is by somehow extirpating your emotions? Becker doesnt go that far, fortunately. Is it coming now? But they were written to be published, werent they? It was during those years that Nero became unhinged: he killed his mother, several of his wives, and his stepbrother. If you read this the first time, you dont really expect it.
When I read that I started laughing. He also wrote long essays and epistlesa lot of epistles. A few years ago I went through a midlife crisis and switched from my first academic career as an evolutionary biologist to become a philosopher. Or you could just walk away altogether You suggested that Bill is much happier as a Stoic, but is that the purpose of Stoicism, individual happiness? You could do two or three degrees in philosophy and never hear his name mentionedin fact I think I did.
The idea is that you should just live your life as a Stoic and lead by example, not going round telling people, Hey, Im a Stoic, look at me, come and join us!. I rediscovered virtue ethics, and that really did appeal to me immediately. I began reading more broadly, andcoming to philosophy in the second half of my lifeI had a lot to catch up with. And is there a core of Stoic belief, Stoic teaching, that can flourish today? I can aspire to behave as much as possible like him, but Im never going to achieve that fully because hes an immortal and I am not the son of God. Irani Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the City College of New York. That doesnt mean he isnt brilliant. The really interesting thing about Stoicism is that, in its modern form, there are large numbers of people trying to practise Stoicism with a view to becoming better people. Suicide is a big deal for the Stoics, and for Epictetus in particular. Is it really philosophy any more at that point? Unlike the Meditations, these were not meant just as personal correspondence. It is imminently readable and perfectly accessible. Often people say that the Meditations come across as preachyand thats true to some extentbut they forget that he is preaching to himself. Of those eight books, unfortunately only four remain. The ancients simply opened schools, and competed with other schools. Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the world at the time, and yet he was dealing not only with major events like revolts throughout the Roman Empire, but also with his wife who was cheating on him, and with some of his advisers who were treacherous. In fact Epictetus says just this in several places in the Discourses. One of the things that I learned very early on, both from reading the ancient Stoics and also from modern Stoics, is that Stoicism is not supposed to be something that you impose on other people. This is nothing like thatin fact, its the furthest from it. img_width: 120, img_height: 120, title: true, price: false, facebook: false, free_clicks: false, }, So the first time I heard about Stoic Week I thought, thats weird, and I didnt pay much attention to it.
Really, so you shouldnt proselytise for Stoicism? I may be doing virtue theory an injustice here, but I havent been aware of an increase in the number of virtuous people as a result of this philosophical study, but there are definitely people behaving stoically now. We know what these people did, and how they practised their philosophies. First of all, this is all very debatable, since we dont really have a lot of independent historical evidence on his life; and secondly, its a very recent development in the way we look at Seneca. It was the kind of life where you are on your deathbed, you look back and you say: Yes, that was worth it: there is not much that Im ashamed of, that was a life well-lived, not just in the sense that I thrived in terms of material possessions, but mostly I was a good person.. So for instance lets say that you are walking in the street by yourself at night and you hear a sound that doesnt feel right. Well get back to the theorist part because Im definitely not an ancient philosophy scholar, so Im not a theorist in that sense, but Im interested in Stoicism as both theory and practice for todays world. Five Books aims to keep its book recommendations and interviews up to date. Epictetus was focused on ethics, which is the third Stoic concern. Whats the main thesis of the Discourses? And then there was the ethics, which was the study of how to live your life. Lawrence Becker is a retired philosophy professor. Make sure you pick up the Gregory Hays translation from Modern Library. Yes. Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the world at the time, yet his wife was cheating on him, and his advisers were treacherous. Thats the equivalent of 200 today presumably. Musonius Rufus, Epictetus teacher, was twice exiled. So do most of our analyses of what were doing in life. I know youre both a theorist and a practitioner. Now we can read those letters and they can guide us through problems with grief, wealth, poverty, success, failure, education and so many other things. So actually the translation might be better: we are dying every day? So I did this, and the woman that was leading the excursion of course talked a lot about Nero, and she also talked a lot about Seneca. As a result, he tells me, hes been a much happier person, because a lot of things that were stressful for him, like his colleagues not thinking well of his work now just washes over him, and hes even amused by it. He put together eight volumes of the Discoursesbasically these are his handwritten notes from Epictetus lectures. So Id rather retire outside of Rome in my own villa. He used some of his great wealth to try to bribe Nero to let him retire, offering two thirds of his lands to the emperor. Some things are under your control and other things are not under your control. Just briefly, from a historical perspective: Stoicism started in Athens in the year 300, or 301 BCE in a school established by Zeno. In contrast, in the Letters to Lucilius, Seneca recognised that good ideas for living can come from diverse sources. But the colleague immediately added Yes, Im trying to decide on whether your work is just mistaken or downright evil. I know, right. But, one can make an argument, as Seneca himself does, that too much wealth becomes obscene because you become focused on the externalities at the expense of virtue. Is that the driving motivation for this kind of behaviour? Of course he didnt know he was about to die prematurely, but he was an old man already, he was in his sixties, and he knew he wouldnt live that much longer and was frank about it. Correct. ), Epictetus is the most preachy and for many, the least fun to read. Its not as if you need to know all the details about how the world works in order to figure out how to live your life. I started reading about ethics. The major Stoic interest group on Facebook now has over 82,000 members, and a number of other such groups have sprung up either for people interested in practising Stoicism locally (Italy, France, Portugal, Brazil, India, etc. I just want to read you one which is right at the beginning of the Discourses, volume 1, chapter 1.32, its an example of the dichotomy of control, but its also an example of something that immediately endeared Epictetus to me: his sense of humour. Theres no tradition of proselytising for Stoicism. If you look at just the titles of the letters, thats revealing, titles such as: On true and false friendship. ? Theyre less moral when judged by a set of conventional critiera. He started spending more time outside of Rome, and thats when he wrote the Epistles to Lucilius. All these things happen to them by reason of their ignorance of what is good and evilI can neither be injured by any of them, for no one can fix on me what is ugly, nor can I be angry with my kinsman, nor hate him If you read Cicero, and if you read Epictetus himself, it becomes clear that many Stoics did believe that they had the best way, if not the only way, certainly the best way of achieving eudaimonia. Nero refused it. The first emotional reaction you have to something, they called an impression. Exactly. The reason the Meditations have endured is because you really get a very clear sense of an interesting man who is struggling with his own limitations, as well as with the environment thats surrounding him. This is the Stoic idea of a sage, which has some affinities with Buddhism. Designed to help you cultivate strength, insight, and wisdom to live your best life. The Stoics offer us valuable strategies of thinking about and dealing with hardships that remain relevant for modern society, Massimo Pigliucci, Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York and practising Stoic, told us in 2016. So, heres the thing, the reason there was a shift between Greek Stoicism and Roman Stoicism. As he quipped to a friend, I dont care about the author if the line is good. That is the ethos of practical philosophyit doesnt matter from whom or when it came from, what matters if it helps you in your life, if only for a second. Seneca was a stoic as well, but like Marcus, he was practical and borrowed liberally from other schools. Epictetus didnt write any books; he was a teacher, in the same vein as Socrates, who made a point of not writing his ideas down. I think the Romans would definitely not go that far.
I have to die. A lot of people, not just Seneca, wrote letters that were meant both as personal letters to friends or acquaintances, but also for broader circulation.
If you get angry, for instance, at something, think: Why am I getting angry here? Ive read an account by James Stockdale who survived torture and solitary confinement during the Vietnam War after his plane was shot down without breaking down through Stoic techniques, based on his memories of having studied Epictetus. Well, now we have this book. You can see that from the fact that they spent a certain amount of timenot a lot, but a certain amount of timearguing against other schools. The reason I picked this book is because a great deal of writing by Seneca has survived, more than that of other Stoics. Seneca is often criticised, even by modern Stoics, as a somewhat ambiguous figure because despite being a self-professed Stoic he was preaching virtue at the same time that he oversaw Neros first five years in power. A lot of people who surrounded the emperor would have wanted favours, and many were treacherous; but he says: Remember, they do this because they dont know better. Seneca was a playwright: he wrote tragedies, and even influenced Shakespeare. Later on he was recalled to Rome, but refused to leave. Ok, suredeath is inevitable.
Marcus Aurelius had studied philosophy when he was young and in particular Stoicism. Of the big three (Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus), Epictetus is the most preachy and for many, the least fun to read. You can only try to be healthy, and wealthy, and educated, and have a good life in the sense of externalities, but, you know, shit happens, so to speakthats not a direct quoteand Stoicism in the great part, especially Epictetus Stoicism, is about how to deal with situation where shit does actually happen. Eric Schwitzgebel did that research. Yes. I also want to say something about Becker himself as a man. The basic idea is this: yes, Stoics do have that reputation, but if you look at what they wrote and the way they actually behaved in life, they were far from emotionless. If you react just on the basis of anger, youre very likely going to make wrong decisions or act rashly; but on the other hand there are situations where you do want to cultivate a sense of indignation, a sense of justice being violated, and you do want to do something about it, and thats a positive emotionthats something that the Stoics would definitely say you should do. There are a couple of places, for instance, where he says that we can have interesting discussions about metaphysics or logic, but those discussions have to bear on specific ethical issues. And I dont either. Theres very little theoretical philosophy in Epictetus. You dont need to go for a gourmet meal, you dont need to go for really fancy cuisine, you can appreciate some good bread, or good wine and recognise that this is an incredibly enjoyable experience. These novels, he notesas with many others from West and Central Africaare united by a common search for identity in post-colonial Africa. It was really amazing. He was a senator, and owned land all over the Roman Empire. The Enchiridion, the Handbook, is the short version that Arrian put together by picking the best bits from the Discourses. Arrian was probably about 23 or so when he did this. Their logic we would still call logic today, but for them it included epistemology, cognitive science, and psychology. As I said before, I came to philosophy late in life, other than my early bout in high school, and I love the field. The chapter titles are topics that Epictetus debated with his students, and these topics were often very practical. So he says we do certain things, or this is something that happened to us. Marcus wrote this over the course of a few years when he was on the German frontier fighting the Marcomanni revolt against Rome. Over the last few years archaeologists here in Rome have opened it up. It is packed with resources on Stoicismfrom more book recommendations to Stoic exercisesas well as a chapter from bestselling author Ryan Holidays book, The Obstacle Is The Way. It is not so great to read through from beginning to end for this reason. The reason for this is interesting. And speaking of Epictetus, my newest book is coming out in the UK on 9/17, with the title The Stoic Guide to a Happy Life (American title: A Field Guide to a Happy Life), and it is a complete rewrite of one of ancient Stoicisms most important texts, Epictetuss Enchiridion (or Manual). s.onload = s.onreadystatechange = function() { They are wonderful authors, but it didnt click with me. The very first book that I read after this renewed interest in Stoicism was The Discourses of Epictetus. Theres nothing like self-flagellation in Stoicism. He makes mistakes, hes a human figure, hes somebody you can relate to but who constantly strives to do better: he constantly strives to do the right thing. Thats like a kind of martial art: if you imagine in judo, somebody moving in a certain direction, well you help them carry on a bit and trip them up in the process. He updates a number of aspects of Stoic philosophy. There is very good empirical evidence that this actually helps significantly. His idea is that you need to take seriously the findings of cognitive science, and update some things, and have a more modest view of human rationality; but as long as theres a core of your rationality, as long as its possible for human beings to think rationally and engage in the kind of reflective exercises that Epictetus was teaching to his students, then an updated version of Stoicism is possible and desirable. The way youve described Marcus Aurelius, hes trying to tell himself that hes not going to be bothered by these people, but you sense, reading between the lines, that he probably will be. If you do things in anger, youre very likely going to do things that you regret. Stoicism is no difference. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. In the early letters, over and over he ends with what he calls a gift for Lucilius, and its always a quotation from somebody else, a quotation from Epicurus, or whoever. Then there is an essay on old age, for instance, on how to age gracefully and deal with it if youre lucky enough to live to experience that. One of the reasons Stoicism came back in modern times is because these tricks are useful. He told me: It used to be that I got irritated, it used to be that I started my day miserably because of somebody doing something obnoxious on the subway, but once I started practising these things and sort of readjusting my mental expectations, I just saw these things as the kind of behaviour that really cannot touch me..
The Stoics also had fictional role models, ancient heroes and demigods like Hercules. Personally, I prefer the Penguin translations, but Ive tried a handful of others and found the differences to be relatively negligible. He lived in Nicopolis to a ripe age of 80, which for the time was remarkable. He was a slave, born in Hierapolis, which is modern Pamukkale in Turkey, which at that time was a Greek city and became a Roman colony in the late 1st century/early 2nd century. The book is structured so that at the end of each chapter there is a commentary, and the commentary is very technical and is where he goes back to the original sources and says things like, I made this point in the chapter because its relevant to these other thinkers, these other quotations. Keep track of how well you respond to the challenge, even using a self-scoring rubric, and when you judge the challenge to be over give yourself a thorough evaluation. There were other examples too: Cato the Younger, for example, who was a famous political opponent of Julius Caesar during the Roman Republic; Seneca refers to him as a sage and as a role model. Its a hands-on book, meant to be written on, and the exercises are grouped according to the three disciplines of the second century Stoic Epictetus: desire (i.e., how to reorient our priorities), action (i.e., how to deal with other people), and assent (i.e., how to improve our judgment). He was a very interesting figure.
Every year, the Walter Scott Prize highlights the best new historical novels. Before I met him, I thought of him as just the author of an academic book on Stoicism. What they did counsel was apatheia. Its difficult, but not impossible to emulate the sage. There was an open market of philosophical ideas, and to some extent, people just gravitated to one school or another depending on either the fame of the teacher or the appeal of the teaching. The contrast between anger and justice is exactly this: that anger will cloud your judgement, even if it is justifiable anger, even if there is a good reason to be angry at something. They were personal correspondence, but when scholars look at the way the text is structured, they are convinced they were meant for publication.
That doesnt mean he isnt brilliant. It strikes me that there was this big movement in philosophy to reinstate virtue ethics, starting in the 1950s with Elizabeth Anscombe and various others saying that weve been caught up in an impoverished view of what ethics is, so lets go back to the ancient Greeks, and particularly to Aristotle. He had a major Stoic for a teacher who gave him a copy of Epictetus Discourses. Then I went beyond Aristotle and read what little there is available on Epicureanism and some of the other Hellenistic schools of virtue ethics. Learn more about the meaning behind Daily Stoic's most popular medallion.
Epictetus says exactly this in the Discourses, he says: I used to go round responding humorously to people and then I got my nose broken. And he adds: so I dont do it anymore, I just walk away.. Now since youve mentioned Seneca, maybe we should move onto book four? For Christians, if you think about it, they have their role modelJesuswho is, by definition, an impossible role model to emulate: hes a god. That is what really appealed to me. Its an exercise in gratitude which is a basic Stoic practice: you have to remind yourself of the people you are grateful to because they are important in your life. Its a sort of philosophical judo, what Bill practises. But theres more to be said. The insult itself is not, but how you react to it is up to you. Beyond that, it reminds you that you can deal with these kind of things. But what about this caricature of Stoicism that the way you achieve independence from the contingencies of life is by somehow extirpating your emotions? Becker doesnt go that far, fortunately. Is it coming now? But they were written to be published, werent they? It was during those years that Nero became unhinged: he killed his mother, several of his wives, and his stepbrother. If you read this the first time, you dont really expect it.
When I read that I started laughing. He also wrote long essays and epistlesa lot of epistles. A few years ago I went through a midlife crisis and switched from my first academic career as an evolutionary biologist to become a philosopher. Or you could just walk away altogether You suggested that Bill is much happier as a Stoic, but is that the purpose of Stoicism, individual happiness? You could do two or three degrees in philosophy and never hear his name mentionedin fact I think I did.
The idea is that you should just live your life as a Stoic and lead by example, not going round telling people, Hey, Im a Stoic, look at me, come and join us!. I rediscovered virtue ethics, and that really did appeal to me immediately. I began reading more broadly, andcoming to philosophy in the second half of my lifeI had a lot to catch up with. And is there a core of Stoic belief, Stoic teaching, that can flourish today? I can aspire to behave as much as possible like him, but Im never going to achieve that fully because hes an immortal and I am not the son of God. Irani Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the City College of New York. That doesnt mean he isnt brilliant. The really interesting thing about Stoicism is that, in its modern form, there are large numbers of people trying to practise Stoicism with a view to becoming better people. Suicide is a big deal for the Stoics, and for Epictetus in particular. Is it really philosophy any more at that point? Unlike the Meditations, these were not meant just as personal correspondence. It is imminently readable and perfectly accessible. Often people say that the Meditations come across as preachyand thats true to some extentbut they forget that he is preaching to himself. Of those eight books, unfortunately only four remain. The ancients simply opened schools, and competed with other schools. Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the world at the time, and yet he was dealing not only with major events like revolts throughout the Roman Empire, but also with his wife who was cheating on him, and with some of his advisers who were treacherous. In fact Epictetus says just this in several places in the Discourses. One of the things that I learned very early on, both from reading the ancient Stoics and also from modern Stoics, is that Stoicism is not supposed to be something that you impose on other people. This is nothing like thatin fact, its the furthest from it. img_width: 120, img_height: 120, title: true, price: false, facebook: false, free_clicks: false, }, So the first time I heard about Stoic Week I thought, thats weird, and I didnt pay much attention to it.