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The Original Stoic Role Model (Episode 111)
755 Plays11 months ago
In this conversation, Caleb and Michael talk Socrates. Why was he held in such high regard by the Stoics? What’s the line of philosophical theory and practice connecting Stoicism to Socrates? And how did Socrates philosophy differ from the Stoics?
(03:52) Who Was Socrates?
(07:07) Philosophy As A Way Off Life
(14:48) The Socratic Method
(20:49) Virtue Is Knowledge
(26:15) Self-knowledge
(33:40) The Importance Of Character
(43:19) Differences
(49:14) Philosophy With Socrates
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Transcript
Socrates' Ethical Focus
00:00:00
Speaker
Better to lose a tooth than to be the kind of person that punches people when they don't deserve it. Because that's somebody who's a coward. That's somebody who doesn't understand justice. And so what Socrates is doing there is he's placing character as the most important thing in the hierarchy of our life and the hierarchy of what makes a good life.
Introduction to Socrates and Stoicism
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Caleb Oncevaros. And I'm Michael Trombley.
00:00:26
Speaker
And today we're going to be talking about Socrates and Stoicism. In particular, we'll be discussing how and why Socrates was seen as a Stoic model, a Stoic role model, and the most important role models for the Stoics.
00:00:45
Speaker
Yeah, we did an earlier episode. Episode number 47 was on the Socratic method. And that was our most popular episode this year. There was a lot of interest in Socrates. So following up on that with a wider scale discussion of Socrates' philosophy. So if that was on one particular technique, the Socratic method, this is on Socrates' philosophy more generally.
Socrates vs. Other Philosophers
00:01:09
Speaker
particularly how it influenced or relates to the Stoics, because there's quite a strong influence there, a kind of proto-Stoicism, early Stoicism and Socrates. He's certainly more like a Stoic than Plato, Aristotle, or the other ancient philosophers before the Stoics, with the exception of maybe the cynics. So I'm going to try to today discuss those key similarities.
00:01:38
Speaker
At the same time, nailing down what Socrates' actual philosophy was, because there's always a bit of ambiguity there, because what we know about Socrates is from the writing of others, but try to get down to what his philosophy was, what the similarities with Stoicism is, going to go then into some key differences as
Comparing Socratic and Stoic Philosophies
00:01:56
Speaker
well.
00:01:56
Speaker
You know, we I just called Socrates having some early stoicism or kind of proto stoicism, but he's not the same. They're not the same. They don't believe the same things. So what are some of the key differences there? And then follow up, finish up as we usually do with some reflections and questions.
00:02:17
Speaker
I should know for those listening that a lot of my understanding of Socrates comes from Gregory Vlastos' book Socrates, Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Gregory Vlastos is an excellent ancient philosophy academic and I think this is
00:02:36
Speaker
the best academic book I've found in on the philosophy of Socrates as distinct from Plato. So once again, that's Gregory Vastos' Socrates, ironist and moral philosopher, and that's inspired a lot of what we'll talk about today. Anything you want to add, Kiel, before we jump into it?
Zeno's Stoic Journey
00:02:53
Speaker
Well, just in terms of Socrates, the importance of Socrates to the Stoics, one of the stories about Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, is that after his ship was wrecked, he was wandering around, stumbled into a bookstore and found Xenophon's memorabilia, which is an account of some of Socrates.
00:03:19
Speaker
most important dialogues as captured by Xenophon. And that was what called him to study philosophy more, in particular with this bent on philosophy as a way of life, as it was practice. Then I think you are immediately struck, especially with Xenophon's memorabilia, and the early Socrates, this focus of Socrates on
00:03:43
Speaker
fundamental questions about what is the good life, but also seeing that and practice through who Socrates was. Yeah, so we have that direct connection. So a lot of these similarities won't be by accident. There is a direct connection between the founding of Stoicism or at least Zeno's call to philosophy and Socrates through the writing of Xenophon.
Socrates' Influence on Western Philosophy
00:04:10
Speaker
Starting with a quick introduction,
00:04:12
Speaker
We provide some biographical information on Socrates in episode 47 on the Socratic method, but I'll touch on some of that again just as a quick refresher and context, or at least some historical information. Socrates was the teacher of Plato and Xenophon, as we just mentioned. Often
00:04:34
Speaker
credited I would say as I mean if not kicking off Western philosophy I think as you put it maybe kicking off Western philosophy as a philosophy as a way of life I would certainly feel comfortable saying that I would say contemporary philosophy as a way of life at least in the Western tradition starts with Socrates at least in terms of what we have left and haven't lost to time
00:04:56
Speaker
And when we talk about Socrates, we're always kind of playing this game of interpretation because he didn't leave any of his own writings. We have his writings from his students, Plato and Xenophon.
Evolution of Socratic Thought
00:05:09
Speaker
Xenophon's memorabilia, as you mentioned, and then Plato's Socratic dialogues.
00:05:14
Speaker
Uh, which feature Socrates as a main character. And one thing there is there's there Plato usually talk about an early, middle and late period. And there's generally a consensus in contemporary research that you get a lot of Socrates represented accurately in early Plato.
00:05:32
Speaker
Middle Plato, some of Socrates, some of Plato's stuff. Late Plato, Socrates is just a character, a mouthpiece for Plato, even though he features in all of these dialogues. So we really focus on early Plato to pull out Socrates' personality. I would say in terms of the relationship with Stoicism, he's also seen as the original sage for the Stoics. Or maybe if not the original sage, I would say the most often referenced sage, the one that's agreed upon as a sage.
00:06:00
Speaker
He's the most referenced person in Epictetus's discourses. So what a major source of inspiration for Epictetus in that sense. And I like to take a step and you know you mentioned that story about Zeno reading Xenophon's memorabilia and being inspired and I like to just take a moment to draw a connection because often we look up to the stoics
00:06:23
Speaker
We admire them or see them as different than us, but you can also see them like us. People trying to learn, people studying philosophy as a way of life. And if you think of the Stoics like us, then the way we look up to Marx, Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca, they were looking up to Socrates. This was someone who lived hundreds of years before, not thousands, but hundreds, who had their life written about. And you would go and you would read representations of their life or their thought, and you'd be inspired, turned towards philosophy as a way of life.
00:06:50
Speaker
The way we read Marcus realizes meditations, the Stoics would read Xenophon's memorabilia, as you mentioned. And there's kind of a one generation removed there connection that I love. And to put that in perspective, he lived around 100 years before Zeno and 400 years before Epictetus and Marcus. And so let's kick things off with some similarities. So where, what does Socrates think and how does that connected to Stoicism?
Virtue and Knowledge
00:07:17
Speaker
I would say before we jump into these, the golden thread that ties all of these similarities together, I think is going to be a focus on knowledge and a focus on disciplined thinking as transforming action and behavior.
00:07:31
Speaker
I think that is what the thread that connects stoicism and Socrates is this idea that we want to be virtuous and good, but the way to do that is through achieving knowledge and disciplined thinking.
00:07:49
Speaker
we're going to see in a moment, but always looking at the refining, the thinking of people, getting them to live an examined life, getting them to think carefully about what they're committed to, and then drawing out the implications of how those beliefs, how those ways of thinking influence their actions. So you are what you think to Socrates and
Practical Philosophy in Daily Life
00:08:11
Speaker
the Stoics.
00:08:12
Speaker
And that's where a lot of these strongest connections come about. So the first similarity I wanted to mention between Socrates and the Stoics is philosophy as a way of life, and more importantly, as a way of a part of everyday life. So I think that Socrates pulled philosophy out of the esoteric and brought it to the day to day. He brought it to the marketplace. When we talk about the Stoics, Stoics name comes from stoa.
00:08:40
Speaker
It's not the mobile app. Sorry, we weren't talking about the mobile app. Yeah. The Stoics named themselves after us. They looked into the future and they go, these guys got to figure it out. A little time paradox there. But Stoa is the porch, the colonnade that the Stoics would discuss philosophy at. And what's important about that metaphor, I think, is that that's a public endeavor, right? It wasn't the academy. It wasn't behind closed doors. It was public. It was by the marketplace.
00:09:08
Speaker
And what Socrates did was I initiated that way of thinking by going out and he's very famous for going out and pestering people, asking them questions, engaging them in philosophy, asking them
00:09:22
Speaker
these ideas about can you define justice, can you define the good, can you define piety, but then grounding that in how that affects their lives, how that affects the actions that they take. And I think a good example of that is the Euthyphro. So in one dialogue, platonic dialogue, Socrates meets the character of Euthyphro and Euthyphro
00:09:46
Speaker
believes that his father did something in pious, his father disrespected the gods and is going to testify against him in court or get him legally implicated for this. Socrates says, wow, you must really understand the nature of piety if you're going to put your father at risk like this. Maybe you can explain what it means to be pious. Maybe you can explain what it means to honor the gods.
00:10:11
Speaker
And they engage in this Socratic dialogue, they talk about the nature of piety, but it's grounded in, because he believes X or so and so is to respect the gods and so and so is to disrespect them, because Euthyphro believes this, that's changing the way he's dealing with his family, that's changed the way that he's dealing with his personal life. His belief about this seemingly abstract, esoteric concept, this religious concept,
00:10:38
Speaker
is bleeding into his everyday life and his actions and his ethics. So then Socrates is making such a strong connection between those two. So it's not this abstract conversation about what it means to be pious. It's a conversation about what it means to be pious grounded in the implications that has for our behavior. And another way that Socrates grounded philosophy as a way of life in the everyday is he really took people's intuitions to be a valuable starting place for philosophy.
00:11:08
Speaker
So non-philosophers can do Socratic philosophy, which is this conversation about your beliefs, this conversation about your intuitions, and why do you think the things you do? Why do you believe the things you believe? The Socratic method that we discussed earlier, children can do Socratic philosophy. If you ever teach kids, they're famous for asking you why a bunch of times. They're just doing Socratic philosophy.
00:11:33
Speaker
There's this kind of childlike joy, wonder, curiosity in Socrates' philosophy. It's not something reserved for the people at the top of the ivory tower. It's the thing you can do with your parents, your friends. It's the thing you can do at the pub when you're debating. It's the thing you can do with a five-year-old when they want to know what happens to people when they die. It's this kind of way of grounding philosophy.
00:11:56
Speaker
And that's obviously in the Stoics as well, but I think that's something that Socrates was really the first person to do in the Western tradition. Yeah, I suppose part of what you see is
00:12:09
Speaker
This focus on practical, ordinary questions of day-to-day living matters that Socrates was facing, or that his fellow citizens were facing, and then thinking about those in a philosophical fashion.
00:12:30
Speaker
you know, taking philosophy to practice and then also concerning yourself with practice as a matter of philosophy, not concerning yourself merely with more abstract questions. And you can see that in dialogues where Socrates is
00:12:48
Speaker
discussing whether he should escape imprisonment. Is that a dust thing to do after his trial? Or you can even see how he brings philosophy into ordinary life in dialogues like this symposium, where it's essentially a dinner party where all the guests are discussing about the nature of love.
00:13:08
Speaker
So, I think both of those aspects of philosophy as a way of life, as a way of being, where you are concerned with day-to-day life, what does the good life look like, and then also bringing some of these tools, this thinking style, these fundamental questions to bear.
00:13:29
Speaker
And these are matters that were perhaps normally just decided by tradition. What's a good life is determined by tradition, religious beliefs, what have you, but then you have Socrates fundamentally asking questions like, what does piety consist in? What does justice consist in? What's the nature of the good? Can virtue be taught and so on?
00:13:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think that was really well
Socrates Among the People
00:13:53
Speaker
put, Caleb. This idea of this connection between, I think you said like bringing these concepts to bear in action, but then bringing the actions back, but then thinking about your actions philosophically as well. So going both directions, right? If you're being reflective, well, what's the practical part of that? You know, we're reflecting on justice, but no, this is going to inform whether I break out of jail or not, or whether I accept my punishment.
00:14:16
Speaker
Okay, where you're acting on your view of what's just or what's pious. Okay. Let's, let's pull that out a second. So this constant willingness, I guess, to transition between both playing fields, right? The high and the low, the grounded and the philosophical, the practical, um, I guess in the abstract, that's really cool. It's really impressive. And I think it's, it's difficult for most people and it's unintuitive and it's something Socrates nailed and something that really attracts me to stoicism.
00:14:46
Speaker
Absolutely, absolutely. Next similarity I want to do is the Socratic method. So that's something that the Stoics, and if you start to look for, you'll see it in the Stoics, but they inherited directly from Socrates called the Socratic method for a reason. This is used in the Stoics as an educational tool, but also as a personal practice for improving your thinking, identifying contradictions, and refining your beliefs when you identify those contradictions.
00:15:13
Speaker
Uh, we have our full episode on this, but if you want more detail, but at a high level, the Socratic method is just about defining a term. You know, I think justice is this searching for a contradiction between that definition and another belief. Uh, well, if justice is this, then, then that means that my action that I did was in just, but I don't think it's in just. So there's some sort of contradiction here and then changing the definition or the other belief. Often you're changing the definition. Sometimes you reject the other belief.
00:15:44
Speaker
You know, I was thinking of an example where I think, well, sometimes if I procrastinate, they go, well, I'm a lazy person, let's say.
00:15:52
Speaker
And then I might think, well, what do I actually think a lazy person is? Well, I don't think it's somebody who struggles to complete things sometimes. That's way too broad of a definition. And then I think, well, so then my one example of procrastination doesn't make me a lazy person. And I kind of have using Socratic thinking to get myself out of this like negative self-talk, but it's an example of how you can be disciplined in your thinking, right? Defining your terms, searching for contradictions and accepting contradictions that you have to reject either the belief or the definition.
00:16:20
Speaker
The Stoics use this all the time, especially Epictetus, but they use this as an educational tool because if you bring someone to realize an apparent contradiction, it makes the lesson stick a lot stronger than if you just tell them what it is, right? So if you tell them
00:16:38
Speaker
If they say, well, money is a good thing, that's what somebody might say. And you say, well, do you agree that if you have good things, it makes you happier? Yes. Well, do people with more money become happier? No. Okay. Well, there's a contradiction there, right? And then the person says, well, that's a good point. I guess money isn't a good thing. Or I guess I need to think more about what it means for something to be good.
00:17:03
Speaker
That's an example of a kind of Socratic education process the Stoics will do. When you do that with somebody, it just makes it stick so much more. They're participating. Their mind is playing the game with you and they're going to remember and they're going to be motivated by what conclusions they came to in such a stronger way than if you just told them, oh, the Stoic definition of good means that money is indifferent.
00:17:29
Speaker
You just end at that? No, you want to participate with people. And that's part of why we encourage, I think, meditation and self-reflection, mindfulness, to do this kind of process in yourself. Anyway, it's a great process. And my point is that, you know, this is what the Socrates came up with, but the Stoics latched on to say, hey, there's something great here. And they kept it going as a practice.
00:17:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think a great example of this is Epictetus in the discourses talking to the father who fled his family, fled his ill daughter because he says that's what would be best for her. And Epictetus says, well, do you usually leave people who are sick? And then it essentially just follows up with a battery of questions that shows that he hasn't thought through his
00:18:21
Speaker
position or perhaps is motivated by something else. Socrates called himself the midwife of ideas, which his thought was that his role wasn't to tell people explicitly what to think. He's somewhat coy about what's the nature of knowledge, some of these fundamental Socratic beliefs, but instead was to help others
00:18:49
Speaker
think through the implications of their views and by doing so come to better ideas. And in that way, he's a good role model for dialogue where when you're in that Socratic position, you're not thinking about just trying to install whatever beliefs you think into the other person's head, but drawing out whatever might be of use to them, to you.
00:19:20
Speaker
in a truly attentive and serious, but also rather playful way. Yeah, I mean, such a lovely metaphor, because I don't know, birth is kind of difficult, but I mean, not kind of difficult, very, very difficult. I wouldn't want to downplay that, but a worthwhile process, right? Like something beautiful.
00:19:51
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know if I would want Socrates as my midwife, but maybe I would as the midwife of ideas, and I'd be grateful afterwards for someone to help me through the process. It's painful, violent in some cases, but you're left with something great, right? Yeah, yeah, I think so. It also does get at that point, I suppose, that thinking through things
00:20:13
Speaker
in a serious way is often not that pleasant. That's why the Stoics say, you know, I should think of philosophy as a hospital. Certainly not always a pleasant, comfortable ordeal to revise some of these fundamental beliefs, fix vices, root out whatever you're trying to root out that takes a serious amount of
00:20:39
Speaker
work and discomfort and seeking things, wanting things to be otherwise is just another way to postpone that project, I suppose. So that Socratic method, either educational tool as a personal practice, it's midwife-free of ideas, that's something that Socrates has come up with, or at least popularized and that we see in the Stoics. So you're channeling Socrates whenever you're doing that.
Virtue as Knowledge
00:21:09
Speaker
But moving on to similarity number three, that is virtue as knowledge or virtue as wisdom. We often talk about this as a stoic argument.
00:21:22
Speaker
And the maybe in some ways the key stoic argument that virtue is wisdom or virtue is a kind of knowledge. So to be excellent as a person is what we mean here when we say virtue. So excellence comes from knowing how to act and that actually comes from Socrates. That is a Socratic argument.
00:21:45
Speaker
In the early Stoic, the early platonic dialogues, we get this argument from Socrates. And what we mean again by virtue is a kind of knowledge. I mean that thinking about bravery as the kind of knowledge of what to avoid and what to pursue, temperance is the kind of knowledge of what to indulge in and when to stop. That's what we're talking about. So there is no excellence without an understanding of how to act.
00:22:12
Speaker
and an understanding of what to do. And if you have that understanding, you will act correctly. You will be an excellent person if you have that knowledge. We get that argument in Socrates. In Plato's Euthydemus, Socrates makes a very stoic argument. He basically argues that
00:22:32
Speaker
Look, we can talk about all these kinds of goods, wealth, pleasure, status. But if these are used by an evil person, they'll be used to do evil things. If they're used by a good person, they'll come out to do good things. So what makes them good or bad?
00:22:51
Speaker
It's not what they are, it's how they're used. And what determines how they're used? Well, that is our knowledge, our wisdom, our opinion about how to use them. And so he says the only thing that is good in and of itself is wisdom. Everything else, making a stoic argument here, everything else is indifferent. It's about how it's used. The only thing good in and of itself is wisdom. The only thing bad in and of itself is ignorance.
00:23:20
Speaker
And I think that even in the Stoics time, that was taken as such an innovative claim or such a controversial claim. So it's cool to see its grounding in Socrates. They were literally hundreds of years earlier. We don't just see it there. It comes up in other parts of Plato as well. But that's a direct line from Socrates to the Stoics, this argument that virtue is a kind of knowledge.
00:23:45
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. If you want to think about some examples, you brought up the example of courage. Well, in order to be courageous, you need to not be reckless or be a coward. And in order to do that, you need to know the difference between those things is the thought.
00:24:09
Speaker
It's not brave to stand up for something that doesn't deserve it. It's not brave to ignore fears when caution is warranted. But sometimes, of course, people are too cautious or they don't stand up to things that they shouldn't.
00:24:28
Speaker
So then the question is, how do you know that difference? Well, that's where knowledge comes into the picture. It's what helps us know what acts are brave, focusing, and so that's that going to extend that a little bit further. You might ask, why are the stoics always so focused on seeing things as they are? Because being able to do that is what points the way towards right action, right character.
00:24:55
Speaker
Yeah, I love that, seeing things the way they are. And this connects back to Socrates' focus on, Socrates and the Stoics focus on strong thinking, discipline thinking, using the Socratic method, connecting beliefs with action through the Socratic method and through this grounded philosophy, this movement we talked about earlier between the practical and the conceptual.
00:25:21
Speaker
That movement between the practical and the conceptual is actually not a dichotomy because our action is determined by what we think and virtue is a kind of wisdom. So when we're transforming our knowledge, we're transforming our character, we're changing how we act at the same time.
00:25:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's a key point. I suppose you can almost understand, you've laid this out in a way that shows, you know, philosophy is a way of life, a Socratic method, virtue as a kind of knowledge. These all share in common this focus on thought, the argument that you can change how you think, and because of that, you can come to acquire knowledge, and by doing so, you can act more virtuously.
00:26:07
Speaker
So stoic. Yeah, so stoic. So stoic. The fourth similarity here, keeping the similarity train going, we have the importance of self-knowledge as one of Socrates' key arguments.
Wisdom in Ignorance
00:26:25
Speaker
So Socrates, there's a lot of different ways you can interpret this. It's a pretty famous claim, but Socrates was told by the Oracle of Delphi,
00:26:36
Speaker
that he was the wisest person in Athens, and Socrates, whether he's playing this up for the crowd, whether he's making a bit of a story about it, or whether he genuinely means this, says, well, I'm so surprised to hear that. So I tried to figure out why would I be the wisest person, because I don't think I'm very wise. Why would the oracle ever say that about me? And then he goes around talking to people, and he sees that they're all kind of ignorant, but they're
00:26:59
Speaker
oblivious to their own ignorance. And he concludes, well, I must be the wisest person because I know one thing. I at least know that I know nothing. I at least have self-knowledge about my own ignorance. And Socrates' lesson here, I think, is that there is different kinds of ignorance. So I already framed and we already talked about them above. If wisdom is good, ignorance is bad. Well, there's different kinds of ignorance. And you can have a kind of factual ignorance.
00:27:27
Speaker
I don't know if you want to call it that, but a factual ignorance example, I don't know how to drive a standard car and you can have self ignorance, which is I think I know how to drive a standard car when I don't. That's a kind of self ignorance. It's a false belief about yourself.
00:27:43
Speaker
And you see how, I don't know how to drive standard and I could get around my life totally fine doing that. But if I had self ignorance about that, I didn't understand my own limitations, well, then there would be some problems. I would, you know, crash a car, more likely just go very slowly. I think that's how standard works and get honked at and get kind of stuck out in the middle of the road.
00:28:04
Speaker
So there's facts about the world, and then there's facts about yourself. And being ignorant or mistaken about facts about yourself is really dangerous, is one of Socrates' key points here, I think. And that we want to be extra careful about self-deception and self-ignorance.
00:28:25
Speaker
The practical advice here is to really understand your limits, understand your room for improvement. And I don't think you should be discouraged by this, but you should, I think instead frame it in the positive ways, which is to take pride in self-knowledge, even in your weaknesses.
00:28:41
Speaker
So don't say, well, I'm going to work on really understanding all the things I'm bad at because I'm bad at things. Say, well, no, I'm going to cultivate this virtue of self-knowledge and cultivating this virtue of self-knowledge includes understanding myself, my strengths, my limitations, how I really exist in the world.
00:29:01
Speaker
And that's something that I know Epictetus stresses a lot, especially in understanding our roles. He talks about understanding what we were made to do, which is to say understanding what we're good at, what we're talented at, what we like to do, not defining ourselves by other people's expectations of us either, not defining ourselves by society's expectations, but really understanding ourselves and using that to guide our actions.
00:29:31
Speaker
And I think also in stoicism, that can be one of the biggest impediments to progression is an honest assessment. We here today, like Ryan Holiday has popularized this idea of ego is the enemy. But I don't think ego.
00:29:50
Speaker
We've talked in a previous episode, Caleb. I'm kind of coming to this idea in real time. We've talked in a previous episode about kind of self-pride, self-respect. I don't think ego is actually a problem in terms of holding yourself to a high standard. I think that's actually a very stoic thing. And Epictetus talks about, you know, you have a piece of the divine in you. Is that ego? No. To Epictetus, that's a fact. I think what's the issue is self-deception. That is where the ego becomes the enemy, if you want to call it ego. And that's something that comes straight through Socrates.
00:30:21
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose that's related to this debate around humility. Should one be humble in the sense of around others with yourself, hiding your power level would be perhaps a modern way to put it. In social context, when you're thinking about yourself, just not puffing yourself up too much or being prideful.
00:30:42
Speaker
And Aristotle thought this was stupid and not a good vice. He thought you should present yourself just as good as you are or something like this, generally. You shouldn't be humble. You shouldn't downplay who you are. But of course, you also shouldn't take false pride in things you are not.
00:30:58
Speaker
And probably the Stoics are relatively close to Aristotle's view that maybe in social situations they might lean a little bit more towards, you know, quietism, not drawing attention to oneself, that sort of thing. But I think you have that idea of
00:31:17
Speaker
Recognizing how good you are is useful because it can show you what to work on next, but also you can take adequate pride in the progress you've made so far. In the context of games or sports, you have lines like, the best poker players know exactly how good they are.
00:31:41
Speaker
And the thought is that they can evaluate different tables, see, okay, lots of maybe amateurs are over here. If I go over that table, I'll do relatively well. If I look at that other table, I see lots of veterans. If I go over there, those people are just way better than I am and I'm going to get completely toasted. And I think there's something to that where you're just thinking about,
00:32:04
Speaker
Uh, an important virtue is, you know, knowing how good you are in different practical domains, different moral domains, and, you know, being, being realistic about that. That's that pursuit of, of knowledge, even if doing so is uncomfortable. Yeah. I think the ultimate irony to this, I mean, your poker example is a good example. We, we, if I, if I can, I psychoanalyze myself.
00:32:31
Speaker
Let's take something like jujitsu, which is a skill that I've been developing for a long time. I want to be good at jujitsu. I value being good at jujitsu. So I start, it hurts my feelings if I think I'm not good at it. I'm like, I want to think of myself. I'm great at this.
00:32:47
Speaker
But ironically, if you can remove that, you will actually get better faster. So that's the weird thing that's so hard to balance. I want to be a good poker player. I want to do well in this tournament. But doing that involves understanding the ways in which I'm bad at it. So it's just looking in the face, something that is difficult to look in the face.
00:33:10
Speaker
You're not living up to what the kind of person you want to be, at least not in that moment, which is the great poker player, which is the great athlete or something like that. And something I'm really, really working on in my life is, is this idea of self knowledge, not viewing myself as the person I want to be, but viewing myself accurately as the person I currently am with these, this aspirational goal. Um, it's really difficult though. I struggle with it a lot. Yeah. Yeah. It's not easy.
00:33:40
Speaker
Cool.
Integrity Over Harm
00:33:41
Speaker
So we've hit on a lot now to the final similarity between Socrates and the Stoics. I have the importance of character. It's kind of connected to this idea of virtue as a kind of knowledge, but really I would say character as the ultimate good. It derives from virtue as a kind of knowledge, but it's connected to that. It's not the exact same.
00:34:07
Speaker
So in Plato's Gorgias, Socrates has a line here where Interlocutor asks him, would you then wish to suffer injustice rather than do it? And Socrates says, for my part, I would wish neither. But if I were forced to choose between suffering injustice and doing it, I would choose to suffer.
00:34:31
Speaker
And again, this sounds like something you might expect to hear straight from Marcus Aurelius. Socrates' point here, so he's saying, look, is it better to have somebody punch you or to punch somebody else who doesn't deserve it? Better to be punched when you don't deserve it or to punch somebody else when they don't deserve it? And Socrates says, I would rather be punched.
00:34:50
Speaker
and the greeks were like that's silly Socrates getting punched hurts that's a bad thing to have happen to you and yeah like I'm sorry for that guy like that too bad for them but um if it has to happen to somebody better it happen to somebody else and Socrates doesn't make a kind of I would say a merciful argument Socrates is not making the argument here well
00:35:16
Speaker
I, my suffering is less important than them so better I get punched in the face than them. Socrates is actually making a selfish argument here and saying, when I punch somebody that doesn't deserve it, I suffer greatly because I have harmed my own character.
00:35:33
Speaker
Whereas when someone punches me, I suffer relatively minorly. I get a bruise on my face. I have some pain for a bit of time. Maybe at worst I lose a tooth, but better to lose a tooth than to be the kind of person that punches people when they don't deserve it. Because that's somebody who's a coward. That's somebody who doesn't understand justice and these kinds of things.
00:35:53
Speaker
And so what Socrates is doing there is he's placing character as the most important thing in the hierarchy of our life and the hierarchy of what makes a good life. And so to say, you know, would I take a punch to the face or compromise my character? Well, I will take a punch to the face. And, you know, that's a silly example and you can use whatever you like, but the idea there is
00:36:17
Speaker
If our character is the most important thing, then it's better to preserve it, even if it means external failure, external difficulty, than to take advantage of somebody else or do something like this.
00:36:34
Speaker
I'm not sure if Socrates' full claim is that physical or reputational damage doesn't matter at all. Like the Stoics would go that far and they would say, you know, getting punched in the face is an indifferent, it's not preferable, but it doesn't connect with good or bad. I don't know if Socrates is going that far, but he's certainly saying you should never compromise your character in exchange for
00:37:05
Speaker
any sort of, I guess, external success or prevention of external harm. I think that's the way of putting it. He almost puts it out in different status, right? Almost practically it ends up looking really similar to what the Stoics would say here. And I think that's a really cool connection.
00:37:21
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I do think this is the one where he almost gets to the full Stoic picture but doesn't exactly, especially in the Gorgias. Other Greco-Roman philosophers, I think, would also agree that one should not sacrifice virtue for the sake of some
00:37:43
Speaker
external gain, even if they think externals do matter to some extent. Aristotle would subscribe to something like that, even if he thinks in order to be happy, you need certain things to go right for you. But I think that is a central point that Socrates argues for, and it's not one that is widely internalized in our culture today.
00:38:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's not really like Socrates is pushing too much back on Aristotle here, or what Aristotle would say, but certainly I guess pushing back on common intuition or common cultural norms.
00:38:26
Speaker
You know, would you be the better, would it better you, you, you be the robber to get robbed, you know, better you to be the unjust person in the position of power than, than the weak person being harmed. And I think he's, he's going to get some Athenian.
00:38:43
Speaker
cultural norms by saying, well, it's better to be the person that's harmed in that context, because I care about something outside of that, which is that virtue. Another interesting point where this pops up in Socrates, also Plato, but Socrates is the one telling this story, is the Ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic, and that's this example of this
00:39:05
Speaker
almost like a Lord of the Rings ring. So they talk about this ring, you put it on, you turn invisible. And Socrates' question is, if you get this ring, what should you do? Should you go about stealing, harming people, getting revenge on those you don't like, indulging in whatever pleasures you want because nobody can catch you?
00:39:23
Speaker
There's no infrared cameras at this time. If you were invisible, you'd be escaping every situation. You basically have a lot of power, right? And whenever I teach that concept, or I used to teach it to undergrads or in philosophy seminars, people would always think about this as a question of like, what would you do? Well, of course I wouldn't go and steal and rob. And it's really important to say, Socrates' question is not that, it's what should you do?
00:39:52
Speaker
Are we only going about, am I only not harming people being powerful, indulging in my will? Am I only not doing that because I'm weak? And if I did have power, should I do it? Kind of like this Nietzschean argument, right? Am I only like,
00:40:09
Speaker
dampening my will to power because the physical world, I'm not a billionaire, I'm not famous, I can't actually get the things I want, so I tell myself I don't actually want them. But if you had that power, should you actually go and get them and realize, well, a lot of these rules you make for yourself are just rules you made up to justify your lack of power?
00:40:31
Speaker
But Socrates is saying, no, that's not the case. You should not do it. And not because you care about other people, again, in your own self-interest. You should not use the ring of Gaijis to engage in your desires, even at the harm of others, because you would make yourself, you would harm your characters. Basically, the argument of the rest of the Republic is an argument in favor of that.
00:40:55
Speaker
It's a spoiler for the Republic. You should not do bad things if you get a special ring. Because you'd be turning yourself into a kind of tyrant, Plato argues, you'd be feeding these actually harmful desires that would take control of you, you'd be perverting your character. So the argument is that if you if you indulge in your desires with absolute power, it's actually kind of self harm. But it's the same kind of argument here, where
00:41:22
Speaker
just this importance, the central importance of virtue and character over achieving these external goods.
00:41:28
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, I think it's a, I like that framing of, it's not merely asking what would you do, but what should you do, of course, in a situation like that. And then even further, like what are you doing now in your life? Like either evading, getting away with things where you can, evading responsibility by telling stories about, about, you know, your lack of power, what have you.
00:41:55
Speaker
And you can read that as a proper ethical challenge. Cool. So those are my five similarities, philosophy as a way of life, the Socratic method as a tool, virtue as a kind of knowledge, the importance of self-knowledge, not deceiving yourself, and the importance of character, that idea that it's better to suffer injustice than to commit injustice because what matters is your character. Anything to add to those similarities before we get into some differences?
00:42:25
Speaker
I think that's a reasonable way to think about it, especially this focus on philosophy as a way of life. What do we have? We have tools for better thinking. Those tools are oriented towards knowledge and by thinking better, by pursuing knowledge, we shape our character to the best extent that we can while recognizing our limits and the limits of our knowledge.
00:42:51
Speaker
sort of, I suppose, in a persistent way, you know, recognizing that there's some facts we cannot change, death being a common stoic theme. We all will die, but also using that realization that one lacks knowledge to change and realize that, you know, maybe there are certain things that can come to know that limits that can't be broken, as it were. Yeah, so I think that's a solid list.
00:43:18
Speaker
Cool. So in terms of differences, I'm going to go through this a bit faster, but I think these are worth calling out.
Socrates' Ethical Inquiries
00:43:25
Speaker
Because we kind of framed this conversation so far. Socrates is this famous philosopher, says all these brilliant things. Zeno reads Xenophon's memorabilia, found stoicism when we have this direct line. But I think there are some actual important differences.
00:43:43
Speaker
You know, the Stoics didn't do 500 years of philosophy to not differentiate themselves a little bit. And I want to go through some of those now. So first is that Socrates probably doesn't provide a fully systematized philosophy, or if he did, we certainly don't have it.
00:43:59
Speaker
It's not like stoicism those meant to be a complete explanation for everything where you have physics logic ethics this this kind of this complete worldview Socrates had some ethical claims possibly some metaphysical claims about our soul and what happens when we die but was really an ethically oriented philosophy and
00:44:21
Speaker
probably not a mutually consistent or totally coherent one because it wasn't a system. He wasn't the founder of a school that he didn't write down his doctrines to make sure they were mutually reinforcing.
00:44:36
Speaker
So that's something to keep in mind. So I think Socrates is a brilliant person to learn from, but if you're looking for a complete system, you can find that in the Stoics or at least the Stoics attempted to do that. You can't find it in Socrates.
Socrates' Philosophical Approach
00:44:47
Speaker
The second difference is that there's a lot more aggression and focus on engaging with non-philosophers. I use the word aggression because I think Socrates intentionally
00:44:59
Speaker
You know, he kind of plays the fool sometimes, but he intentionally engages with people that are getting upset, eventually engaging with people that are frustrating. He's certainly disagreeable. If you're not aggressive, certainly disagreeable, and doesn't care if he's making you upset all the time. The Stoics, instead, they tend to stick to their own. They tend to engage with students or from those who come actively seeking their knowledge. They're not bugging people out on the street. They're not being the gadfly that Socrates was.
00:45:27
Speaker
Third, Socrates was more of an outsider. I really think there's kind of a cynic bend to his philosophy. Marcus and Seneca, these were insiders. These were people who, by all accounts, were incredibly successful, famous, popular, politically savvy. Socrates, at least older Socrates, at least the Socrates of the Apology and the Socrates of the Photonic Dialogues, maybe was
00:45:57
Speaker
certainly wasn't living on the outskirts of society, was a citizen, was likely wealthy, was politically connected, but certainly is rubbing people the wrong way. When Marcus talks about waking up in the morning and dealing with difficult people and kind of aligning himself to deal with them in a politically savvy way, I don't think this is what Socrates is saying.
00:46:22
Speaker
The last one, I think, is that Socrates has potentially more of a skeptic bent. So no stoic would say, I know that I know nothing. I took that quote and I said, oh, Socrates is talking about self-deception. But if you take that quote literally, he's talking about not knowing anything, one thing, right? So not just self-deception, but every kind of deception. I don't know, there's a pot and pan in front of me.
00:46:50
Speaker
That kind of sigh, I don't live in the matrix, these kind of simple claims. So the Stoics would say that many of us are ignorant, but the Stoics are pretty confident about most physical claims, like most claims about our knowledge about the physical world, and they think they have an answer to ethical claims.
00:47:14
Speaker
They just think most of us don't believe it yet or haven't internalized it yet. So the Stoics think they know things. He's going to be careful not to be deceived. So if we take Socrates' claim, I know that I know nothing literally, you're getting actually a much more skeptic argument than the Stoics give us.
00:47:30
Speaker
Yeah. Any reflection on those? Yeah. So if I were to summarize those, I'd say at the level of theory Socrates is not a systematic philosopher. He didn't write down any of his works as students. Plato and Xenophon have their differences. And then Plato, who we have the most works from, there are different Socrates, as you explained in the very beginning.
00:47:54
Speaker
Um, and then we have this idea that in terms of practice, he's more disagreeable. He doesn't have the sort of the stoic approach of, you know, building a school, attracting students. And then, you know, hepatitis councils treat non-stoics in a conventional way, generally. And that's a, that's a general rule of thumb. Socrates doesn't have that.
00:48:17
Speaker
And then these last two points, I think, are sort of, I think one should remember that different schools of philosophy took different lessons from Socrates. So one way to understand the cynics, skeptics and the Stoics is as focusing or highlighting different aspects of Socrates, the philosopher.
00:48:41
Speaker
On the Stoics, you have knowledge, ideas about a virtue. The cynics really go with the outsider status of Socrates. And thinking of that role of a gadfly, I think Diogenes is even more of an outsider than Socrates is. And then, of course, you have the skeptic focusing on the
00:49:05
Speaker
questioning attitude of Socrates and maximizing that into a completely skeptical, skeptical attitude. The last one I would add in terms of differences is there's
00:49:19
Speaker
There are issues, I think, this is related to the first one where Socrates is not a systematic philosopher, but there are always other readings of what Socrates said, and one reason the dialogues of Plato and Xenophon have persisted so long is that
00:49:38
Speaker
They sort of call you to do philosophy with Socrates, and one upshot of that is it's not an explanation of a complete systematic philosophy of life. And indeed, many people throughout history have come to different readings about what Socrates has said, whether he's being literal, ironic, or there's some esoteric reading that is more plausible to a given dialogue.
00:50:05
Speaker
And I think that's part of what it is to read philosophy with Socrates is that, you know, that call to do philosophy with him, with his students, and it's less dogmatic, not dogmatic in the negative sense, but your
00:50:22
Speaker
called to engage in activity as opposed to what many Stoic teachers might focus on. Of course, there's activity, but it's also essential to understand the key techniques, key tenets of the Stoic view. So that might be one difference I would add or at least extend to this list.
00:50:41
Speaker
Yeah, the metaphor I was thinking of when you were talking Killa was, you know, if you're a hammer, everything starts looking like a male. And if you read Socrates is still like, you're going to find, wow, there's a lot in common here. And there is a lot in common here, but the skeptic would say the same thing. The cynic would say the same thing. Probably the modern Buddhist would say the same thing. So there is.
00:51:03
Speaker
I haven't heard it put that way but I think that's beautiful there's an ambiguity to Socrates' writing that leads to the or our representations of Socrates that leads to this kind of permanent well to go back to because it encourages
00:51:19
Speaker
It doesn't end with an answer, it ends with a question. And that encourages the action of philosophy, as you put it. Yeah, yeah. I think maybe in some future episodes, we'll dive into some of these dialogues and see if we can bring that out some more. Yeah, we're gonna go deep. Yeah. Awesome. So anything else you wanted to add?
00:51:43
Speaker
Well, there's always so much more to add on this. I think the point about outsiders is really interesting. And I do think we should do another conversation. I think Socrates brings up that question of what's the role of outsiders, insiders generally? And then was he an outsider? Was he an insider? Was he an outsider always challenging at the end society? Or was he an insider who lost? And I think those questions can be worth thinking through.
00:52:13
Speaker
I think people, I hope, listening to this, you've got a good sense of why the Stoics took Socrates so seriously as a thinker.
00:52:21
Speaker
We probably could have spent a little bit more time on his biography because that probably matters as well in terms of, you know, who he was, his military experience, athletic experience, who he was in the community and so on. Uh, but, uh, you know, we've only, we're a limited, limited podcast with limited means. So, uh, there's so much time. There's so much Socrates to talk about. I think one question I'll leave for those listening and for you, Caleb, and for myself is this idea of.
00:52:50
Speaker
Do we think as modern Stoics that we've an obligation to be more like a gadfly? Have we lost that cynic edge that Socrates had that?
00:53:00
Speaker
know, bringing philosophy to the people, whether they like it or not. And is that for better or worse, that, that willingness to engage that willingness to meet non philosophers where they're at, even if it makes them uncomfortable, I guess that's the gadfly part. I think the stoics are all for philosophical, practical conversations. I think that we certainly.
00:53:24
Speaker
Certainly myself. And I think most of the people in the social community don't have that kind of antagonistic or disagreeable edge in terms of seeing it as if maybe a, you know, an obligation or divine calling Socrates would say, I don't think I have a divine calling, but maybe there's some, maybe there's some reason for the modern Stoics to, I don't know, try to share a bit more intensely. Excellent. Awesome. Thanks for putting this together. Great. Thanks.
00:53:56
Speaker
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00:54:25
Speaker
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00:54:48
Speaker
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