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Stoicism FAQ: Who Should You Read First? What Is up to You? (Episode 2)
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Want to become more Stoic? Join us and other Stoics this October: Stoicism Applied by Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay on Maven
In this episode, Caleb and Michael discuss important commonly asked questions about Stoicism:
- Who you should read first
- The concept of the dichotomy of control
- The meaning of virtue
Stoa Conversations is Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay’s podcast on Stoic theory and practice.
Caleb and Michael work together on the Stoa app. Stoa is designed to help you build resilience and focus on what matters. It combines the practical philosophy of Stoicism with modern techniques and meditation.
Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): stoameditation.com/pod
Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com
Caleb Ontiveros has a background in academic philosophy (MA) and startups. His favorite Stoic is Marcus Aurelius. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/calebmontiveros
Michael Tremblay also has a background in academic philosophy (PhD) where he focused on Epictetus. He is also a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His favorite Stoic is Epictetus. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/_MikeTremblay
Thank you to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Stoicism
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome, you are listening to Stowe Conversations, a discussion between myself, Caleb Antiveros, and Michael Trombley about the theory and practice of stoicism. We discuss what we've learned about building resilience and developing virtue through our philosophical studies. We're not sages, so we'll also touch on how we are or have approached obstacles in our own lives, with the hope that hearing these stories will be useful to others.
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome.
Frequently Asked Questions on Stoicism
00:00:29
Speaker
My name's Caleb Ontiveros. Hi, everyone. I'm Michael Trombley. And today we're going to be talking about frequently asked questions and stoicism.
Epictetus vs Marcus Aurelius
00:00:41
Speaker
The very first question is, who should I read first? All right. What's your take on that, Mike? Yeah. Woo hoo. Let's jump into it. Exciting with these questions because it's the things that people want to know, the things that we hear a lot about. So the first one is what stoic should I read first?
00:00:57
Speaker
I'm gonna have a bit of a controversial take maybe, but I'm gonna provide some context. When you first get into stoicism, there's a lot of kind of introductions. So Ryan Hollis, S.M.L. Pigliucci, like there's these kind of auctions, Donald Robertson, to stoicism. And then people naturally say, okay, I've kind of read about it. I want to actually read it. But some of the works, you have these older translations, you have this confusing, these confusing writings, you want to engage with them, you don't know where to start. The big three stoics, the big three Roman stoics,
00:01:23
Speaker
are Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus. And they're the most famous because they're the ones that we have the most writing of. We actually have a lot of what they have said has been preserved, which is lucky. The earlier Stoic, the founders of Stoicism, lived 300 years before these guys.
00:01:41
Speaker
But we've lost what they've, what they said. We lost what they wrote, except for some fragments, except for some pieces that have been preserved. So when you're thinking about where to start, it's usually going to come down to one of these three people. And I know a lot of people, I know the most famous is Surrealist's Meditations. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I know a lot of people like that. I know that was one of the ones that was recommended to me. But where I recommend people start actually is with Epictetus. And I recommend that they start with Epictetus's Handbook.
00:02:07
Speaker
And my reason for that is there's a couple reasons I have for that. First, the handbook is really short. It's about maybe I'm looking at this now in this every man's copy that I have actually about 20 pages, right? So it's not deep or not long, doesn't require a big time commitment. The other thing that's valuable about Epictetus is that Epictetus was a teacher. So there's a lot of, I know a lot of people love Marcus Aurelius and I think there's a lot of value to his writing or I think it's great. But Marcus Aurelius is,
00:02:37
Speaker
an advanced practitioner. He's an advanced stoic writing to himself, right? The Meditations is a series of self-reflections, a series of notes he provided himself, only for the purpose of himself. It wasn't intended for wider readership. And so when you dig into Epictetus's Handbook, which has got a 20-page summary of his key lessons, you're getting the greatest hits.
00:02:57
Speaker
You're getting the greatest hits presented by somebody who's writing for students, who's writing for people who maybe don't find stoicism intuitive, who maybe need some clarification, who maybe disagree. And that's what I really like about it. And that's why I think it's the best place to start. And then if you, if you dig into Epictetus and you like it, you'll know you'll like the rest of it and you can commit more time and dig more into it. But then you'll also have a strong foundation.
Choosing Stoic Texts for Beginners
00:03:20
Speaker
You won't likely to have, you're not as likely to have misinterpretations as you can sometimes have reading other stoics.
00:03:26
Speaker
The other big one is Seneca's Letters on Ethics. I love this one, but as you can see, I'm holding up a copy for those listening. My edition is 600 pages. So it's a huge commitment, right? There's a lot to sit down and read a 600 page book when you're looking to start, you're looking to dig into it. And so that's why for me, it's Epictetus's Handbook. But interested to hear what you have to say about this, Caleb, what your thoughts are.
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, it was always the question of who's asking. So if you've read a little bit of maybe some modern Stoic and you're thinking about which of the ancient Stoic should I start with first, there may be
00:04:02
Speaker
one answer, and then for people who have heard very little of stoicism apart from maybe just a clip, YouTube video, our friend told them about something, perhaps the answer was slightly different. At least for me, I found the meditations to be the most powerful and interesting. So I read, I did read Apictetus actually while taking an undergrad course, but reading him, it didn't strike me as an important philosophy.
00:04:31
Speaker
just given the place where I was at in life, which isn't so much a knock, knock on Epictetus by any means. I came to Stoicism through reading Nassim Taleb's Anti-Fragile. He mentioned Seneca a decent amount. And then from there going to Seneca and Marcus Aurelius. And it was the meditations that stuck out to me and who I'd happily refer people to one of the modern translations of that work.
Understanding Stoic Control
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's something worth clarifying too, is that translations make a difference. I think when you're starting your journey, you're asking, who should I read first? I think you should prioritize readability over accuracy. I think what's important is that you expose yourself to as much of the thinking as possible.
00:05:17
Speaker
And then you're going to be in a better spot once you've read a lot of stoicism. You're going to be in a better spot anyway to discuss questions of accuracy or interpretation or things like this. But I think sometimes people and I read this on online and people jump right into these kind of hundreds of translations that they can get for free. And they're like, this is terrible. Why did these people write this way? And they thought they didn't write this way. They were writing in Latin or ancient Greek. But this was a style of translation back in the day, 100 plus years ago.
00:05:45
Speaker
I'm a bit interested in what, in what piqued your interest in Marcus Aurelius. Cause yeah, I think as you said, it really comes down to the individual because for me, I was, Epictetus was the first person I read and I just fell in love with his way of writing. It was like a total shock to the system. And I know people get that experience of Marcus Aurelius and I value Marcus Aurelius as a thinker and as a historically significant practitioner of stoicism.
00:06:10
Speaker
But it never had kind of that same kind of emotional intuitive appeal that Epictetus did for me. So I'm interested in what Marcus Aurelius, why he appealed to you so immediately. Marcus Aurelius just has a number of aphorisms that stuck out to me. He has a sort of laconic, almost cryptic at times, writing style, and the topics range from ways that people have influenced him to what are probably paraphrases of Epictetus.
00:06:40
Speaker
to some reminder about how to manage people to even much larger sort of philosophical summaries on how he views his place in nature. So that large range where so much of the language is designed to carry the message specifically you or one gets a sense that
00:07:00
Speaker
Marcus Aurelius either chose these phrases that he heard from elsewhere or wrote them himself so that they would be maxims you could remember and use them in practical life. So whether it's a reminder, like at some point you will have forgotten everything. Later, everything will have forgotten you or something of that nature. These sorts of phrases are something one can return to in one's ordinary life.
00:07:27
Speaker
Yeah, so maybe if Avectetus was writing for students, cannot the appeal on my end, Marcus Aurelius was writing in as punchy a way as possible. I'm conscious that there's no love for Seneca here. I think Seneca is great. I really do value it. I don't think you can go wrong picking up any of these. I just think that there is a certain punchiness, as you said, in Marcus Aurelius, there's a certain punchiness, there's a certain maximization of the ability to remember these things, the ability to act on these things. And then Avectetus' style is just meant to jolt people out of their comfort zone.
00:07:57
Speaker
I think those are much more, I think both of those can be a bit more inspiring or people are motivating first reads when you're getting into it. I would say that if you're looking for something more systematic, then Epictetus makes the most sense because neither Seneca and certainly not Marcus Aurelius are that systematic by, by the way of presentation. So in a sense, if you're looking to understand stoic philosophy, going to Epictetus first would be ideal.
00:08:28
Speaker
If you're looking for letters on specific situations, like how to manage time, then you might go to Seneca. If you want notes on how a specific person incorporated these ideas into his life, then meditations is the place to go. Yeah, that's a good way of dividing it. Great. One interesting question or one question I have for you is whether there is a, if you remember a specific passage that jumped out to you.
00:08:57
Speaker
One of the first things I remember about reading about Epictetus that kind of jumped out to me, there's obviously the dichotomy of control, which is really interesting, but I remember the person who had to hold the chamber pot.
00:09:10
Speaker
this is the thing that people go to the bathroom in and this kind of like person who was in a low down position and had to clean these or move these around or work a very kind of embarrassing job. And I remember there's this passage Epictetus has taught him this person basically says in this conversation is either do it or don't do it but don't do it and complain about it like either
00:09:29
Speaker
Either you're above that kind of work, in which case you say no and you suffer the consequences, or you're not above that kind of work, in which case you do it and you reap the benefits of being paid, and you face the consequences of doing something that's maybe embarrassing or maybe lower social standing. The thing that jumped out about that, it's a funny story, but the thing that jumped out about that to me was that call for consistency.
00:09:54
Speaker
that call for that idea of don't do something and then complain about doing it or be upset that you're the kind of person
Virtue and Stoic Philosophy
00:10:00
Speaker
that does it or be frustrated about your situation that made you make this choice that you then made. It was this idea of, you know, again, something now years later is very intuitive to me with this idea of like, you've been dealt your cards.
00:10:12
Speaker
Pick the card that is most suitable to you, that seems the most appropriate to you, but don't spend this time whining about the hand, whining about the card that you've been dealt. And in a way that's an actualization of the dichotomy of control, but that was just so striking for me, because again, it's not just abstract philosophy, it's about practical action, and it's about the way that you relate to the practical action, so the effect that has on your happiness and your perspective.
00:10:37
Speaker
And Epictetus just has this way of talking where he just makes it sound so obvious or makes it sound like the idea that you were ruminating on this problem is the silly part and what matters is the action or how you confront it. That's what stood out to me.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great example. He just has so many stories like this, whether it's that one or noting Helvidius Priscus, who he believes his role is to be a senator and whether he's threatened with being exiled or execution does not matter. He's chosen to be a senator and he will face the consequences of doing that, performing that role excellently. Yeah, there's also, there's the athlete who,
00:11:20
Speaker
Can't remember for what reason, but it has to, is faced with the choice of getting their, basically their genitals amputated in the athletes. No, I'm an athlete. I care about my body. I'd rather choose, choose death and be like physically mutilated in this way.
00:11:32
Speaker
Which is always a bit, these cultural examples, there's another one about the beard. You'll kill me before you kind of shave off my beard because I'm a philosopher. There's these kinds of cultural specificity to these stories, but there's always this point about, you know, be consistent, walk the walk, figure out who you want to be and be it, right? I think that's Marcus Aurelius, waste no more time thinking about what a man should be and whatever.
00:11:54
Speaker
you know, what kind of man you should be and be one or be that person. That was just, that was very confronting and very different than the other kind of philosophy I'd read in school, which was very about, we're going to spend a lot of time worrying about what type of people we should be. We're going to spend a lot of time worrying about ethics and very little time worrying about actually acting well or personal transformation. For me, I always love the line from Marcus Aurelius, very short. He said, the universe is transformation, life is opinion.
00:12:23
Speaker
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00:12:50
Speaker
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00:13:17
Speaker
Our next question is then, what
Episode Summary
00:13:20
Speaker
is really in our control? Yeah, this is a juicy one. I really like this one. I wrote a paper about this or a piece about this for Modern Stoicism blog. And this is one we get all the time. I think one of the most common misunderstandings and.
00:13:34
Speaker
So the dichotomy in control and stoicism, it's one of the first things you learn. And it's presented with this view of some things are in your control. Some things aren't in your control. You should care about the things that are in your control. You shouldn't care about the things that aren't. And it really naturally leads to a lot of these, like people naturally go, okay, that's all good and fine, but what's in my control? What's not in my control? And people...
00:13:56
Speaker
And then you end up with all these kind of like more deep concerns about it because people will say, your beliefs are in your control and people will respond. No, it doesn't seem to me like I can change what I believe. It doesn't seem to me like I can change what I think. Or how you act is up to you and people will respond. It seems to me there's parts of my behavior that are either genetic dispositions or ways that I grew up or ways that I now just like respond to situations. Like people naturally want to push and pull on this concept of control.
00:14:24
Speaker
It's one of the most common questions I see online as people say, what about this? Is this in my control or this? Is this in my control? So to answer that question.
00:14:32
Speaker
First, you really need to understand the terms that we're talking about here when the dichotomy of control is presented. Because the dichotomy of control is, I would say, about 80% right the way it's presented. And it's presented that way because it's easily understood. Anybody can snap to it and understand it immediately. But the real concept that the Stoics use, I think, is better translated and is up to. And when you go back to the Greek,
00:14:57
Speaker
They talk about up to you. They don't use a word for control. They use a word that means determined by you or up to you.
00:15:05
Speaker
And so the key concept for stoicism is not one of control because control is this ability to, I think we define control as this ability to either immediately determine, in which case it's no, your beliefs are not in your control because you can't immediately determine your beliefs or immediately think differently or act differently or immediately not be angry. Your emotions by that criteria aren't in your control. Or we think of control as the ability to like strongly influence. So we say LeBron James controls the basketball game.
00:15:35
Speaker
And what we mean is that he really sets the pace, but that's not strong enough either, right? Because we wouldn't want to say the stoics wouldn't say that the outcome of a soccer game or basketball game are in your control. So this idea instead is I really think people should drop this idea of control and switch to this idea of up to you. And it's a little bit more complicated. It's a little bit harder to explain to non-stoke, but it's much more robust. And what's meant by up to you is this idea that do you determine it?
00:16:03
Speaker
are you causally responsible for it? And what is meant by that is can anyone else but yourself stop it from happening? So if I make a decision, if I decide to walk across the street,
00:16:20
Speaker
That decision is up to me. Nobody can stop that decision. That decision is caused by me. It's determined by me. Nobody else can stop me from making that decision. But my ability to actually walk across the street, that can be impaired by cliff, by a wall, by three people holding their arms together and not letting me by. So my ability to actually walk across the street is not up to me.
00:16:43
Speaker
But my decision is up to me. And so when we think of up to me, it makes a lot more sense than trying to think of these things in terms of control. And then so the question is not really what's really in our control. The question is really what is up to us. And as Abitita says, what's up to us is really the faculties of our mind.
00:17:00
Speaker
the way that we think, the decisions we make, our emotions, choices we make, the way that we respond to situations. These are the things that we determine. These are the things when something happens, we say, who was responsible for that? Who was responsible for your anger? Who was responsible for your choice? And so I was gonna say, that's you, that's up to you. And so on one side, the upside of thinking about things that are up to you is it removes this confusion or control. The other upside to this,
00:17:28
Speaker
is it allows this sense of kind of moral transformation and personal improvement that takes place over time, right? Because the thing that you hear is if you don't, when you begin to study stoicism, you hear anger is in your control. And somebody very intuitive is like anger doesn't feel like the kind of thing that's in my control at all. It seems like the stoists don't really know what they're talking about, but they're not talking, they don't say anger is in your control. They say anger is up to you.
00:17:50
Speaker
Anger is the kind of thing that you're responsible for, that you create. It's not the external situations. That's your thought processes, your decisions. We just did a podcast, you and I, Caleb, on stoicism and emotions, and we talked a lot about how anger is determined by our judgment, by the way we think about things. These extreme emotions are caused by the way we relate to situations. And that's why the emotions are up to us, because they're being produced by the way that we think about the situation.
00:18:17
Speaker
Likewise, the way that we believe, the way that we believe things, the way that we act when confronted with the situation, these are all things that are up to us. They're things that we have to shape over time as we strive towards self-improvement, our character, the quality of our character, our virtue or vice, that's something that's up to us. But it's not something we control in the sense of
00:18:36
Speaker
I can't immediately snap my fingers and become a good person. But it is something up to me. It is something that has to become a good person over the course of my life. So that was a bit of a long answer. But just to wrap that all up, the idea is
00:18:50
Speaker
What's really in our control doesn't really matter to the stomach. So what matters is what's up to us and what's up to us are these things that are the result of our choices, the choices themselves and the results of those choices. So things like the decisions we make, our emotions, the quality of our character, the way we treat other people, the way we think about ourselves, these kinds of things. These are the things that are up to us. And that's how you should apply and think about the dichotomy of control in a more robust way. So how does this,
00:19:18
Speaker
manifest when it comes to beliefs. It seems like someone might say that it seems like beliefs are just something I have when the world appears to be a certain way. In what sense is my belief that I have been harmed or the sun is bright up to me as opposed to external influences?
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to really nerd out on this one, because I think it's a really good question. Epictetus uses this term, which is the proheirisis, which is our faculty of choice, right? And for him, really, that's the thing that's up to us. And what's included in faculty of choice, in our faculty of choice of proheirisis, is the ability to reflect on a situation, the ability to make a decision about that situation.
00:20:05
Speaker
and the result of that decision, be that an emotion, be that a desire to do an action, that's really on Epictetus's account, what's up to us, just those three primary faculty. I was giving more particular examples before, but it's those three primary types of things. So again, to reflect on a situation, to reflect on something, to make a decision about it, and then the results of that decision, the result to form a judgment and the results of that judgment.
00:20:32
Speaker
So when you say belief is the result of the judgment, so to provide an example, someone insults you. I think these examples are always really easy and they're really emotionally charged. Someone insults you.
00:20:44
Speaker
We don't have a belief yet, right? We just have a situation. And we can play that out because if it's a stranger on the street, it's your best friend that you've known for years. It's a person that you've hurt and maybe has the right to insult you. Depending on the situation, you're going to look at that situation very differently. So all you have is an event, somebody that's said words to you. That's the impression. That's the first part of this link that leads to emotions and judgments and thoughts.
00:21:12
Speaker
That impression is not up to us. Somebody can honk their horn and they can put an impression in our brain. We don't control the impressions that come in. What we control or what's up to us is what we do with them. So then we then reflect on that impression. We say, wow, I'm really angry. That person said that. Or we're just joking around or maybe I deserved it. So I'm not angry. We reflect on it. We form a judgment. And then that judgment leads to an emotion or behavior or a decision.
00:21:40
Speaker
So beliefs, beliefs come after reflection, beliefs come after judgments, right? Impressions are not beliefs. Impressions are these sensations. Beliefs are things that we believe, we've assented to their actions, they're things we've had a choice in. So on that view,
00:21:59
Speaker
Of course, our beliefs are up to us because our beliefs are things that we have participated in, their choices, their actions, impressions, the way that the world is initially presented to us. That's not up to us. People can do that. People can force that on us. But these beliefs are things that we participate in.
00:22:17
Speaker
So what do you say about the case where it just seems essentially difficult to make a particular judgment? I think the insult case is very useful and practical, and the stoic view seems clearly true there.
00:22:33
Speaker
But maybe there are other cases where you look at the sun and you have natural beliefs about the sun, the sky, the sun's brightness, or perhaps in other emotionally charged cases, something especially tragic happens and you just naturally respond to that situation and feel like, where's the, where did you play a role in this? Yeah. So I think, I think that's where the distinction between up to you and in your control becomes important. Because I think what you're saying, Kayla, as I'm understanding you is,
00:23:03
Speaker
It seems really clear to me that there's some things that I don't feel like I'm very much participating in. Something tragic happens and I just get upset. I don't feel like I'm, I don't feel like I'm deliberating, like a scientist removed from that situation. Or I look at the sign and I think, wow, there is a sun there. I am not really like, it becomes input, like the way that I would explain using the stoic model of the mind is it becomes input output.
00:23:26
Speaker
The impression comes in, it moves right through the machine, the belief comes out. There's two things you would say to this. First you would say, yeah, you're right. That doesn't really seem like it's in your control. And you're right that in a kind of a meaningful sense, it's not in your control. But what it is, it's up to you because you're the one that kind of controls that.
00:23:43
Speaker
that machine, that judging machine, that reflecting machine. You're the one that's built it over time. So if you're saying I'm the kind of person where if I see a house, I just think that's a house. If I see a son, I just think that's a son. What that's telling you is that you've built a judging machine that's not very skeptical.
00:24:00
Speaker
That's not very reflective. And what you want to do is then over time, you want to practice refraining judgment. You want to practice your skeptical skills and kind of change, change that machine. So instead of something coming in and a belief coming out, the impression comes in and it stays there. It doesn't output the belief. And that's up to you to cultivate and develop that change, right? That's a result of, that's a, and if you're not doing it, it's still the result of you. That's still up to you. It's just not what you want.
00:24:27
Speaker
With the examples of grief, we think we don't feel grief in a vacuum, right? We have tons of beliefs about what matters to our lives, who these people are, what the situation is. And if you being who you are, confront that situation, you're going to have the same output every time or a similar output because you have a certain beliefs coming into that situation and you have a certain kind of skill set at reflecting and judging. You have a certain kind of level of progress as a stoic.
00:24:54
Speaker
And once again, yeah, you don't have full control over that situation. You don't have these full kind of mental skills yet, but those skills are, nothing is being caused by the impression. Nothing is, nothing is impossible for you to change over time, I would say. And it's in that sense that the responsibility, the up to you-ness, the causality is placed on you, not on the event itself.
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. The way I think of the dichotomy of control is in terms of what initial kind two kinds of things are in your control and what initial for in a first pass at that are there just two kinds of things, decisions and your reflective judgments.
00:25:38
Speaker
One can decide to do nearly anything, whether that decision reaches its aim is quite often not entirely under your control. We have the common analogy of you are the archer and you can
00:25:55
Speaker
guide the arrow to your best ability, but if something unusual happens, the target moves, there's a sudden unpredictable gust of wind, that sort of thing is out of your hands.
00:26:10
Speaker
And then reflective judgments, I think the model of what the sort of input output as you are, what is in between that and that you can shape that machine as it were, or you can shape yourself to have a sort of character to believe particular things or not believe particular things in any given situation.
00:26:32
Speaker
That's a lifelong project. It's something that takes time. It's less like decisions in the sense that it feels like one can make nearly any decision in the moment and more a matter of slowly shaping yourself into a kind of person who has true beliefs. Yeah, I think that's really well put. I really like that.
00:26:52
Speaker
Yeah, grounding that as you do in your identity, what you fundamentally are is the next step. Why is this sort of thing? Why are these two things up to me? It's because this is what I am as a rational and social being.
00:27:09
Speaker
Yeah, we could spend a whole episode on the dichotomy of control. Yeah, you're absolutely right that there becomes the, there's the two parts that there's the up to, and then there's the you. So you're bringing in both the conception of what it means for something to be up to something. And then you're also bringing in the conception of what you are. And yeah, if you don't identify yourself.
00:27:29
Speaker
with your mind exclusively, if your identity is entirely linked to your beliefs, your behaviors, your choices, then we might lose some of that. But that's a really important part of that for the Stoics. When you evaluate someone, when you judge somebody, you're judging them on the quality of their beliefs, their decisions, and their choices. You're judging them on the quality of their character because that's what they are. They are, as you said, a rational being.
00:27:52
Speaker
a decision-making thing. And the decision-making thing is good when it makes good decisions and bad when it makes bad decisions. I think this really naturally leads into our next question. So our next question is a very common one. What is virtue? Stoics and of course many other ancient philosophers' philosophies center around this idea of virtue. And it's not a word that is
00:28:21
Speaker
used perhaps as much as it used to be in the English speaking world. And it's a word that might have somewhat different connotations than the Stoics imagined it as possessing. So it's always important to be clear about this, especially since it's the ultimate aim, if you will, of the Stoics life is to cultivate virtue.
00:28:43
Speaker
And the closest analog to virtue in the English language is probably character. So virtue is traits that someone may have. You can think of it almost as firmly ingrained habits. You can describe someone as being conscientious.
00:29:02
Speaker
thoughtful, these are parts of their character. And virtue specifically is excellent character, not just any kind of character trait. It's the character traits that humans are supposed to have and what make us excellent. So in the most abstract sense, or perhaps not the most abstract sense, but a rather abstract sense, virtue is character specifically, good character.
00:29:29
Speaker
Yeah. And I, if I can provide some context around virtue to, to flush that out more, because I think that's, I think that's dead on. When you say virtue is good character, it, that's what is virtue for the Stoics, which is an important distinction. Um, because virtue, the Greek word is Arate.
00:29:47
Speaker
And the Aristotle and Plato and all these Greeks that came before the Stoics that were talking about this, they would talk about the Arte of anything, like inanimate objects, right? It was like, it was, it meant the excellence of, so you could have the Arte of a car, right? You could say the virtues of a car is to go really fast.
00:30:06
Speaker
My car is excellent because it goes very fast and I can control it quite easily and it looks nice on the outside. And people could disagree about what the virtues of a car were. They could say, no, I think what's important for a car is that it has great gas mileage and you can have a disagreement. And, and, but you're talking about what it means to be a great car and people would all say a car that doesn't run is a bad car. You could all agree on a lack of virtue too, or things that would be vices, right?
00:30:31
Speaker
And so it's the sense of excellence. And then that excellence with the car example, right, is defined by what the thing is. So what does it means to be an excellent car is very different than what it means to be an excellent knife, which is very different than what it means to be an excellent person. And as you pointed out for the Stoics, what it means to be an excellent person, what it means to have virtue in the context of a human being,
00:30:54
Speaker
is to have good character. It's not to be athletic. It's not to be physically attractive. It's not to be even socially adept or anything like this. It is to do the right things, to act the right ways, actualizing therefore cardinal virtues.
00:31:13
Speaker
And when you think of virtue in this ancient Greek sense, you're going to summarize that it's this overall excellence, and then it's like virtue of what? Virtue of a person. And then people will disagree about what that means. But the Stoics, they go, oh, virtue of a person is something very small. As you already said, Caleb, it's these traits of character. It's these ingrained habits. It's these ways of acting. That's what the Stoics are talking about when they're talking about virtue. So it's not really a very abstract, it's not a very abstract, elitist, removed thing as it might sound when you first hear virtue.
00:31:42
Speaker
how good of a person are you? How will we measure when we size you up as a quality of a human being? What we measure then is we measure your virtues. We measure your character traits. We don't measure something else. Yeah. So that's the kind of, so that's the kind of contextual history that then that stoicism provides a distinct answer to, which I think is still my opinion. I think the right way of thinking.
00:32:03
Speaker
And then there's the question, okay, what character traits are good? And of course there's the four classical or four cardinal virtues of courage, justice,
00:32:20
Speaker
self-control and wisdom. Sometimes people might call self-control moderation or temperance or wisdom has a very distinctly practical element or concern about practical wisdom. But nonetheless, those are the four concerning how you treat others and justice, what sorts of things you avoid or fear and what you do not avoid and fear, encourage how you relate to your
00:32:49
Speaker
desires and self-control. And then finally how your picture of the good and of the world comes together into a character that one could ideally describe as wise. I think the thing about the four virtues is they're stations of the same thing.
00:33:08
Speaker
So they're different ways of talking about the same thing. And the thing that they're talking about is knowledge. Virtue at the end of the day is knowledge. And then you can say, knowledge of what? In some cases, it's knowledge, as you said, of what to avoid, not to avoid. And we call that kind of knowledge courage. Sometimes it's knowledge of what to desire or not to desire or how to moderate those desires. And we call that
00:33:32
Speaker
self-control but at the end of the day with the Stoics all of these things are conceived of as all of these virtues are just different types of understanding of the world and understanding how to navigate the world and that comes back if that sounds counterintuitive to people because a lot of times people think of courage as something that I train up or I develop over time it's like a muscle it's not knowing I know that I should be able to stand up to I know that I should be able to do what scares me when it's good or stand up to people that are cruel or unusual but
00:34:01
Speaker
I can't, I have that knowledge. But for the Stoics, again, they had that kind of input-output machine, right? Like that way of looking at your mind as this reflective, something that reflects and judges these impressions that you have. And they're like, if you really understood what to do in the situation, you would come to the right judgment and you would act in the right way. The person that acts well is just the person that knows what to do and really thoroughly understands that, not knows it in a propositional sense, not, I could write in a test.
00:34:26
Speaker
Oh, I should act this way, but really understands why they should act that way. And their values align with that and they know why they have those values. But that's the kind of crystallization of perfect virtue in the form of the sage, the ideal individual. And then these other ones you were talking about are these, they're just ways of talking about that when you apply it to different situations. And so that's why sometimes people talk about like virtuous knowledge. And then, and we have these different virtues. They're all just these types of knowledge, these ways of talking about knowing and understanding.
00:34:54
Speaker
And that hopefully answers the question, are these the only four virtues? And the answer to that is virtue is really only one thing, knowledge, but it has many different handles or there are many different
00:35:11
Speaker
things one can be knowledgeable or not about. Although these are, I think, a very useful initial classification, there are, of course, other ways of talking about virtue and one can think about virtues that might be neglected from the classical form.
00:35:26
Speaker
Yeah, that being said, isn't the sort of situation where one can pick out any possible traits and label as a virtue. There are real constraints on what counts as a legitimate virtue. And that name constraint being, is it the sort of thing that is aligned with what is true? Does that character traits properly help one pursue knowledge? Yeah, great. And the other thing
00:35:54
Speaker
again there's so many different ways we can tackle this but another thing that I wanted to hit on with virtue yeah so there's this constraint of trueness right it's not like there's this constraint of trueness you can't just say you can't just call anything a virtue there there is real right and wrong with stoicism which is nice it's not this it's not subjective there there is this kind of there's some ambiguity in situations that you need to evaluate individually but there is a clear conception of right and wrong and a better and worse way to act if you value something for example that doesn't have value or
00:36:20
Speaker
you ignore something that does have value in the pursuit of something else that's very abstract if you
00:36:26
Speaker
sell off your family for $10. So it's going to say you've put money on a bit of a pedestal there. You've made a knowledge mistake, right? Or you, again, going back to easy family examples, you're not able to be a good parent or you're not be able to do your job well. You're not able to fulfill a kind of beneficial role in society because your desires take control of yourself, whether that's something like gambling or these kinds of this inability to, or a need for.
00:36:50
Speaker
possessions they're gonna say look like you really have you're lacking this kind of moderation you've distorted you have a distorted view of what matters in life another thing that I want to say about virtue we could almost do another episode I'm realizing now about stoic contradictions or stoic paradoxes because another thing about virtue because we talk all about virtue but one thing that the stoics think is that virtue is all or nothing right virtue is
00:37:13
Speaker
like something like straightness and this folks will say look you can't be more or less like straight as in like not a curved line like a straight line you can't be more or less straight that straight is the state of being this perfection and virtue is the same way you either have it or you don't
00:37:28
Speaker
And people will say, what do you mean how to include some people who are more virtuous and some people who are less? And they make this analogy to the individual drowning, right? And they say, look, whether your head is below the surface by an inch or you're at the bottom of the ocean, both people are equally drowning. And that's the way that they talk about virtue. And the reason for that, that can sound very elitist. It can sound demoralizing. But the reason for that is that virtue is knowledge, right? So you cannot be
00:37:59
Speaker
courageous without also having a knowledge without also possessing the other virtues without also having the other ones at the same time right somebody who's like robbing a bank and not afraid of getting shot they're not displaying courage but lacking temperance or moderation right they're actually lacking courage because they're doing something without fear
00:38:23
Speaker
But they're not embodying knowledge, like a kind of holistic knowledge as they do that. That's an interesting thing. But that doesn't really change us as people that are progressing, us as people that are trying to be better people. But it's this helpful thing that even though you can think of this knowledge as being, or these virtues as being divided, they really do interconnect. And if you try to become more courageous in a vacuum,
00:38:44
Speaker
Or you try to become more self-controlled without a conception of why you're trying to be self-controlled or what the purpose of it is. You can't really develop virtue in that way. They have to be interconnected. They have to be being developed together because they all connect in the same knowledge. And what do you think about that, Caleb? I think the idea that virtue is unitary is correct. And often people make the mistake of
00:39:10
Speaker
picking out a trait they in isolation find admirable about a given person and perhaps overestimating the character of that person just because they have one specific trait that is admirable.
00:39:26
Speaker
when that trait is misused. A common example might be if you admire the political skill of a particular politician. Is that really so valuable? That depends on all the other traits that the politician has on their ends, and admiring something like political skill by itself is a mistake. It's a real sense of not latching onto the right thing that matters.
00:39:50
Speaker
Yeah, totally. It's not excellence in terms of how a human being should be excellent. Because when you think of virtue as excellence, it's a political virtue. It is excellence in terms of the job, right? The same way somebody can be excellent as a doctor at a certain skill set, it's a medical virtue. But a human virtues, being an excellent person, you can't take something in isolation, has to always be interconnected with the rest of being a good person.
00:40:16
Speaker
So we've covered three questions and at this point are running into the limits of time as well as technical issues. So we might call it there. We covered what's still you should read first, what is really under your control and the nature of virtue, which seems like a good list for about 45 minutes. All good things to know. Yeah. All good things. Excellent. Chat soon.
00:40:47
Speaker
Great. Thanks Caleb. Thanks for listening to Stoa Conversations. If you found this conversation useful, please give us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast platform you use and share it with a friend. We are just starting this podcast, so every bit of help goes a long way. And please get in touch with us at Stoa, at stommeditation.com if you ever have any feedback or questions. Until next time.