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Role Ethics: The Stoic Decision-Making Framework (Episode 57)
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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
We discuss one of the most important Stoic ideas: Role ethics.
This is a decision making framework from the Stoic philosopher, Epictetus. It’s a challenge to live a meaningful life by performing the roles you’ve been assigned and the roles you’ve chosen with excellence. We talk about the different kinds of roles we should occupy according the Stoics and how these roles provide a direction for life.
(01:54) Why Role Ethics Matters
(09:11) What Role Ethics Is
(11:36) What Are My Roles?
(13:18) The Role of Human Being
(18:00) Specific Roles
(23:54) Relationships
(35:29) Chosen Roles
(42:23) Role Ethics and Career Choice
(48:49) Outstanding Questions
***
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Transcript
Introduction to Stoic Conversations Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Just be a good neighbor. You have a job, just be a good coworker. You don't have any of those things. You have a family. Be good to your family. And in doing that, you're, you're fulfilling your roles and you're living a good life. You're being excellent. There's something really beautiful and empowering about that. We always have something to do well.
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to Stoic Conversations. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of Stoicism. Each week we'll share two conversations, one between the two of us, and another we'll be an in-depth conversation with and experts.
Introduction to Role Ethics in Stoicism
00:00:37
Speaker
In this podcast, Michael and I discuss one of the most important Stoic ideas, role ethics. This is a decision-making framework and ethic from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, and it's really a model for how to live a meaningful life by performing the roles you've been assigned and the ones you've chosen with excellence.
00:01:02
Speaker
We talk about what this means with the different kinds of roles we occupy are, according to the Stoics, and how they provide direction for our lives. And as always, if you'd like to help us out, please subscribe to Stoa Conversations, onto your podcast player, and give us a rating in Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Here is our conversation. Welcome to Stoa Conversations. My name is Cael Bontavaros.
00:01:32
Speaker
And my name is Michael Trombley. And at some point, we'll need to think of a different introduction sequence. But that point is not this episode. Instead, the purpose of this episode is to chat about role ethics. And Michael put together some introductory notes on this one. So I'll hand it off to him first. Yeah, great.
Key Stoic Ethical Commitments
00:01:55
Speaker
So the reason I want to talk about role ethics, role ethics are really
00:02:02
Speaker
In terms of how you live your life for stoicism, they're the meat of how we think about what we do on a day-to-day basis.
00:02:11
Speaker
If you practice stoicism or you've just been studying it, just been learning about it, stoicism has some controversial key ethical commitments. Some of those that I wrote down are, one, we should prioritize our character over external things. So stoicism says the only thing that's really good and bad is your character, the choices you make, virtue or vice, in other words.
00:02:34
Speaker
If something happens to you, your reputation gets ruined, your business goes under, even you get a severe physical injury, these things are not good and bad in any sort of absolute sense. Maybe it's preferred that that doesn't happen, but they're not extreme in that way.
Virtue and Vice in External Circumstances
00:02:52
Speaker
That's one stoic ethical commitment. Another is that we should always believe what is true.
00:02:58
Speaker
So we should be committed to seeing the world as it actually is. A third stoic view is to avoid passions. So to avoid the extreme emotions that come from believing things that aren't true, such as, you know.
00:03:12
Speaker
my reputation's been ruined, so I need to get revenge. There's a passion that comes from the false belief that something external and insult matters. And the fourth main ethical commitment, or one of the four biggest ethical commitments, is that we should still, despite these things, we should still make proper use of externals. So even though virtue and vice are the only things that really matter, we demonstrate our virtue and vice, like athletes playing with a ball,
00:03:41
Speaker
by how we navigate the external world, the external circumstances. So we demonstrate virtue and vice by how we make use of our property, our reputation, our physical body, things like this. So that's all good and fine. I think some of that is really important. I think some of that is the most important thing, actually. And I really like those ideas. But these are all pretty broad categories. They don't really, doesn't really give us a ton of advice about how to deal with the nitty gritty of actual life, how to deal with
00:04:11
Speaker
ethical conflicts or conundrums or confusions, mainly this point of make proper use of externals. What does it mean to make proper use of externals?
Role Ethics in Decision-Making
00:04:20
Speaker
What does it mean to actually navigate these external circumstances virtuously? And what do I do in a specific situation? How should I deal with my career? What is the best way to navigate family drama? Should I move to a new country?
00:04:39
Speaker
Should I take a job that helps people, helps people less fortunate than me, or should I stay and focus on my own community and my own immediate family? Is charity work, is helping people less fortunate than you, even what's best? Is that even what it means to live a good life, or are there other things I should be doing with my time?
00:04:57
Speaker
You know, rule ethics, that's where we find stoicism to answer these kinds of questions, these questions that make up 80, 90% of other practical ethics. And I wanted to cover it because it's a bit complicated and it sometimes gets put to the side, but it is how you figure out how to do those vast majority of decisions in your life. So just to emphasize what
00:05:25
Speaker
Michael has seen that I think the study of role ethics is important because it provides different action guiding principles or an action guiding framework for making decisions. That's one aspect. And it's also another thing to
00:05:42
Speaker
focus on and always come back to are these questions about roles whenever you encounter a dilemma or an obstacle it's always useful to think to return to what's my role here what am I doing here in addition to the stoic virtues
00:06:00
Speaker
So you have the cardinal virtues like courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, and those are going to provide some information about how best to live, but we can add even more detail still with this picture of role ethics. So just to say more about why I think this matters is that improved decision making and it helps give a focus to our life.
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah, and two things to add to that, Caleb, because that's a great point.
Comparing Ethical Frameworks
00:06:31
Speaker
One is that most other practical ethics are going to provide you a set of decision-making tools. That's why people are attracted to ethics. So something like utilitarianism is going to say, well, calculate what produces the most net gain or utility and the least harm. Deontology is going to say, well, you know, make a choice that doesn't break an absolute law, like you should not kill.
00:06:55
Speaker
you should not steal or you should not lie and virtue ethics always kind of suffers from or can seem like it suffers from the circularity because virtue ethics is claim is well act the way a great person would act
00:07:10
Speaker
And then, you know, it leaves people kind of stuck. Well, what is a great person? What does that look like? How do I make that decision in the moment? And so we've already talked about, provide some tools, you know, contemplation of the sage, emulation, look to other great people and copy them. But, you know, you are not a Socrates, Epictetus says, right? You can't just copy other people. You have to understand yourself and your situation that's never happened before. And how do you navigate that?
00:07:33
Speaker
Role ethics provides that decision-making tool, as you said. Another thing that's important about role ethics is that people that don't have role ethics, there is this misinterpretation of stoicism.
00:07:48
Speaker
that gets often confused with a kind of nihilism where something comes up or a kind of defeatism. Something comes up and people think, well, it's not in my control, so it doesn't matter. It's not up to me, so it doesn't matter. Or people think that stoicism is just about reconceptualizing events so they don't make you upset or they don't cause passions.
00:08:12
Speaker
Not about that, it's about there is ethical commitments to your community, there are ethical commitments to other people, and rural ethics is what grounds those.
Practical Application of Role Ethics
00:08:21
Speaker
Epictetus goes through his three topoi, his three areas of study, and the first is about
00:08:27
Speaker
You know, wanting to be a good person or wanting not to be a vicious person. That's the, that's the area of desire and aversion. But then his second area is about impulse act and not to act. It's about how to navigate external circumstances. And as his famous quote, because we should not be unfeeling like a statue. So the, the expertise is very explicit. The goal of stoicism is not to be unfeeling like a statue. It is not.
00:08:54
Speaker
to not be hurt by anything that happens and not to care about anything that happens, is not to have this absolute indifference. And so what moves us, once we care about virtual advice, what moves us from a statue to a member of our community is again this rule ethics.
00:09:11
Speaker
So with that in mind, role ethics, if it didn't originate with this thinker, then it was fully developed by Pinatius, whose major work was called On Duties, and discussed the practical ethics of navigating externals.
00:09:27
Speaker
He lived from 185 BC to 110 BC and was the last undisputed head of the Stoic school. So we often talk about Zeno, we often talk about Chrysippus. They were the first and third head of the Stoic schools. Penaetius was the last undisputed head of the Stoic school. Around 110 BC he would have passed away.
00:09:51
Speaker
And he's typically what's called a middle stoic. We don't talk about the middle stoics that much because we focus on the early ones, they founded it. And then the late stoics are, you know, Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius. Those are the ones who focus on ethics and we have their writings, but he fully developed this idea of role ethics that Epictetus picks up. And when we, when we think about role ethics, I already mentioned this, but we think of.
00:10:14
Speaker
Stoicism is about being virtuous, about living in accordance with nature, but Epictetus provides this metaphor of we're supposed to navigate external, external as well. And Epictetus provides this metaphor of being like the ball player. So the stoic is the one who does not get overly attached to the ball, but understands that, you know, their job is to do the best with it and still try to play the game.
00:10:37
Speaker
And, you know, how do we throw the ball? How do we make those judgments? As you mentioned, that's rule ethics. And rule ethics says that in any situation, we have a role to play and we navigate that situation well when we fulfill that rule. We navigate that situation poorly when we don't fulfill that rule.
00:10:56
Speaker
So the next question actually is going to be, what are our roles and what do they commit us to?
Understanding Human and Individual Roles
00:11:04
Speaker
Before I go any further, I should say that a lot of the, a lot of the notes I've taken here, these are from Brian Johnson's book, the role ethics of Epictetus, because that's, in Epictetus, we get the most developed picture of this role ethics.
00:11:19
Speaker
Um, Johnson's a professor at Fordham University. I've had the chance to chat with him a couple of times. Really smart guy, knowledgeable. Recommend that book if you want to look into it in further detail. So anything else to say before we jump into it? No, I think we're ready to do it.
00:11:36
Speaker
Cool. I hope you're ready to those listening. So, so the first thing to understand, so the question is, okay, well, I, you know, I live well when I fulfill my role. So what are my roles and what do they commit me to? How do I know what my roles are and what do they say I should be doing?
00:11:51
Speaker
So I'm going to be talking a lot here about Epictetus because he's the one who really develops this, as I said. So the first thing to understand is that there's two kinds of rules. So there's one that's general to all humans. So all humans share this general role. And then there are the roles that are specific to you as an individual.
00:12:08
Speaker
Here's a quote from Epictetus, For in all that we do, unless we refer our actions to some end, we'll be acting at random. There is besides a particular end and a general end. First of all, I must act as a human being.
00:12:24
Speaker
That's the first end, Epictetus says. The second end relates to each person's specific occupation and prohyrasis, their faculty of choice, their character. The lyre player must act as a lyre player, the carpenter as a carpenter.
00:12:39
Speaker
So as you were saying before Caleb, Epictetus says, look, we need a decision-making criteria. Otherwise we're making decisions at random. We base that, the decision-making criteria on our ends, our roles. And there's two of them. There's the one that's shared by all humans, the role of a human being. And then there's the second kinds of rules, which relate to our specific occupations and our specific dispositions. And I'll get into those more later, but that's the, that's the general overall category.
00:13:10
Speaker
all humans, and then you specifically as an individual. So next question is, what is the role of a human being? What is that role that is shared by all people? Well, there's a couple of characteristics to this that Epictetus says. A couple of things that our role as a rational person commits to. First, we must act rationally.
00:13:31
Speaker
We should follow nature, which comes back to that point I was saying before about believing what is true. We should not be violent, careless, gluttonous, or passive. These go against our pro-social animal commitments. And Epictetus says also, we should have a kind of shame that holds us to a high standard. Here's another quote by Epictetus. Know first who you are and then adorn yourself accordingly. You are a human being.
00:13:58
Speaker
That is, a mortal animal who knows how to use impressions rationally. And what is rationally? In agreement with nature and perfectly.
00:14:08
Speaker
So we should know who we are. We should hold ourselves to that standard. We should be embarrassed if we act below that standard, which is to say not to make careful use of impressions. And that, as Epictetus talks a lot about this, is when we're kind of acting like a wild animal rather than an intelligent animal, an animal that can make use of impressions.
Living According to Nature and the Universe
00:14:29
Speaker
Anything to add to that about our general role of human being? Yeah, I think it's useful to think about
00:14:35
Speaker
This broad role of a human being is having two aspects, two aspects that sort of flow from nature as it were. The ancient psilocyte nature was perfectly ordered and it also had this providential side, this telos that is the purpose. And when that comes to human beings, you can think of human beings as having the rational
00:15:03
Speaker
aspect of themselves, which comes to proper management of impressions, pursuing knowledge, and then this other aspect which is rationality in the social sphere. Rationality as it looks like living with others as a social animal.
00:15:21
Speaker
You know, of course another part of not being a wild beast as it were is that human beings are the kind of being who can sit in a 13-hour flight and not have like chimpanzees might completely trash the plane by the end of it. We are social in addition to having this ability to manage impressions.
00:15:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's great. And absolutely right that we're going to stress that, that rational capacity, that, that ability to, you know, play nice with others or to contribute to a community. There's also something here. We talk a lot in, on this podcast for those that have been following, we talk a lot about living in accordance with your nature or living in accordance with nature. We often say, well, you know, that means the way things really are, there's kind of a factual part to it. And then it means your nature, your nature as a human being.
00:16:15
Speaker
which has an end that fits into the rest of humanity. And when we think about role ethics, we can think about, well, what does he mean by a role? He means you have a role to play. You have a role to play in this universe. And if you fulfill that role, you can think of a kind of a total lack of friction between who you are and the nature of reality around you or the world around you.
00:16:42
Speaker
You know, you can imagine someone who's trying desperately to be something that is not themselves, trying desperately to be something different than who they are. And that's going to create a kind of friction, a kind of suffering, a kind of tension. And so to fulfill your role is to, to, yeah, to kind of perfectly align those two things. And so obviously the most important role is that role of a person, which as you've cut out is this, this kind of rational one. And in this, this pro-social animal.
00:17:12
Speaker
But I guess I wanted to clarify that too, is that, so when we talk about living in accordance with nature, it's the nature of other things, the nature of yourself. What is your role to play within that broader nature? And when we're trying to figure out that role you have to play,
00:17:27
Speaker
That way you can reduce the amount of friction. The first thing you do is you consider your essential nature as a human being. That's always going to be the biggest thing because if you go against that, if you act as if he says, you know, like a wild animal, if you say, I don't need other people, I can be an island, or it doesn't matter if I act violently,
Self-Actualization Through Individual Roles
00:17:48
Speaker
carelessly, gluttonously, or passively. These things don't matter to me.
00:17:52
Speaker
You're setting yourself up for a world of hurt because you're not acting in accordance with your nature, and you're not going to align with the nature of things as they more broadly are. So the thing with that, so that's the general rule shared by all people. That's the number one thing, keep in mind. But the thing about that is it doesn't get as much further than those ethical commitments I committed as to at the beginning. Don't have passions, live in accordance with nature, make correct use of impressions. It doesn't really get as much past that, the general rule. So the really fun part is when we get into our specific rules.
00:18:21
Speaker
So how should I structure I'm a person, but so is everybody else. How should I live me as a person, me in my specific context, you know, you listening, you as who you are as an individual, you know, we're not all the same. We shouldn't all live the same. So yeah, we shouldn't become cannibals. We shouldn't murder. We shouldn't be entirely sloth or passive, but what do I do with my life? How do I, how do I navigate that part? Well, this is when you get to the second category, which are the roles that are specific to you.
00:18:50
Speaker
And you can again, you can think about these roles being given to you by God. You know, I think the stoics would say that you can think of these roles as being given to you by nature, which is again, the sox would.
00:19:00
Speaker
You know, I think those two are, are, are the same nature and God, but this is kind of your role to play. You can also think of it, I would say in terms of self actualization, you know, when people talk about I'm, I'm become the person I'm supposed to be. I'm living the life I'm supposed to live. These are the kinds of, these are the kinds of things we're talking about when we're talking about our specific roles.
00:19:22
Speaker
So the first type of specific rule is grounded in our particular capacities. So these limit some types of lives and open up some other types of lives to your particular capacities and talents. So Epictetus provides the example, the role of the wrestler is limited, is limited to those with a certain kind of strength.
00:19:44
Speaker
So in this case, I mean, all I put to this is point here, take it or leave it, change it if you want, but you say, look, only certain kinds of people are going to be professional athletes. Only people who are born with certain physical traits are going to be professional athletes. If not in everything, certainly in something like track and field, certainly in something like basketball. Like, look, you're just not going to be an NBA player if you're 5'4". It's just not going to happen.
00:20:08
Speaker
So there's a kind of limited roles that come from your abilities, but it also determines our roles to a certain extent. So if we're particularly talented at something, we should lean towards that, or we should listen to that talent and consider that talent.
00:20:26
Speaker
I think this is easier when you think of it in terms of a providential universe. So you can use your abilities as evidence of what you are made to do. And then we also here can understand that kind of friction, right? Where if you start, if you ignore your talents, your capabilities, your proclivities,
00:20:45
Speaker
and you lean towards things that you're not inclined towards, you're not talented at, you're not disposed towards, you're going to be kind of increasing that friction. You're going to be going against what you were made to do in a sense. I think an interesting thing here, Caleb, as I'm saying this, interested to get your take on this. We're often inspired by people who do things in spite of things.
00:21:07
Speaker
And I don't want to say that the Stoics, and I think the Stoics are also proud of people who do things in spite of things. So I don't think the Stoics are kind of limiting this, you know, you wouldn't want to point to, I don't know, somebody participates in the Paralympic, for example, and say, well, you didn't understand because you were, because you had a disability, you didn't understand your role not to be an athlete. I wouldn't say that, you know, there, there's some nuance here. It's not just as simple as the thing you were good at when you were six and everybody encouraged you to do.
00:21:37
Speaker
But maybe that, you know, maybe that Paralympic athlete is disposed to have an incredible talent towards adversity. Maybe they have an incredible talent towards athletic ability and they just happen to have something that has happened to their body that's outside of their control. There's different ways to cut it, right? There needs to be some nuance, but the truth remains that we should listen and understand and pay attention to our talents and our dispositions.
00:22:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right that we often see stories of, oh, this is the entrepreneur who managed to come back from nothing, make all these financially risky decisions. They could have lost their house, but they didn't. We'll hear those kinds of stories they managed to push through, but we'll always hear less about people who got leverage against their house because they thought they had some new novel.
00:22:28
Speaker
business insights and then end up in a hospital because they feel like they've completely failed and have let down their family and so forth. There's the line from Clancy's which is a fate guides the willing and drags the unwilling behind it, which I think captures this and it's always hard to see perhaps whether you are
00:22:54
Speaker
pushing yourself in a way that helps realize your nature or if you're pushing against the grade hoping for something impossible. But often I think people do both and perhaps at least in terms of the stories we're often faced with, we'll get many of outsized positive outcomes and hear less about the people who were dragged by fate.
00:23:23
Speaker
Yeah, lots of survivorship bias and inspirational stories, I should say. And there's something in just because there's something inspirational about somebody who did something with low chances of success does not mean it's great advice for how to structure your own life. I should say, you know, something to
00:23:41
Speaker
So that's the first thing you're talking about this question, how should I live? Well, I shouldn't live, not like a human shouldn't do antisocial, violent, careless things. Well, and then I should consider my talents. What am I good at? What am I disposed towards? And then the third level is to consider next your relationships.
00:23:59
Speaker
So to quote Epictetus, an example of the relationships he considers for world ethics, son, father, brother, citizen, husband, wife, neighbor, fellow traveler, ruler, and subject. So lots of things, lots of examples here. You have family relationships. You have permanent relationships of being citizens or temporarily permanent, long-term. You have things you consensually entered like husband and wife.
00:24:27
Speaker
Things that you probably didn't consider but came about anyway, like neighbor. Things that happened just in passing, like fellow traveler. You're walking down the road. How should you treat somebody you come across in your travels? And then you have large scale, again, political power dynamics of ruler and subject. So of these relationships, there's two kinds. There's those that are natural and those that are acquired. So natural relationships are necessary.
00:24:54
Speaker
Or rather, I should say, really always apply to you. So those you want to think of family relationships, son, mother, daughter.
Natural vs Acquired Roles
00:25:03
Speaker
Regardless, even if your parent passes away, you're still a son in a certain sense, you're still a daughter in a certain sense. And then there's the choir relationships, they have some flexibility. So friend, you owe somebody something when you're their friend, but you can choose to stop being their friend.
00:25:20
Speaker
neighbor, you owe somebody something when you're their neighbor, but if you move across the country, you don't owe that neighbor anything anymore. They're no longer your neighbor.
00:25:29
Speaker
And each of these positions, Epictetus says, each of these relationships have an appropriate set of actions or duties that correspond with them. I'll do another quote by Epictetus here. He says, if you're a counselor of some city, remember that you're a counselor. If a youth, remember that you're a youth. If a senior, that you're a senior. If a father, that you're a father. For each of these designations, upon reflection, always suggest the proper deeds.
00:25:55
Speaker
If you go and disparage your brother, I tell you, you've forgotten who you are and what your designation is. So I think Dita says, look, when, when we want to know how to navigate our family relationships, we want to know how to navigate interpersonal relationships or these kinds of, these kinds of practical decisions reflect upon your, the role you have in that relationship, the role you have in that engagement and the kind of proper functions or duties that come with that.
00:26:25
Speaker
One thing I should say here, I sometimes see reflections of this. I read this on the internet or have discussions with people and say, well, it's saying it's not accounting for abusive relationships or it's not accounting for extreme examples.
00:26:36
Speaker
It's saying I should always be nice to my father, even if my father was a terrible person. I don't think that's what it's saying. I think what it is saying is there's a certain set of obligations you should meet as a son or a daughter. And if you've met those, it's smooth sailing, but that doesn't necessarily mean total acquiescence, total passiveness.
00:26:59
Speaker
So it's not saying, it's not saying you need to be subservient. I don't, I don't take it that way when I read Epictetus, but it's saying that look, it's a, it's a kind of relationship ethics. It's the kind of idea that if, if there was two people burning, you know, locked in a house, it would not be wrong of me to save my family member first. There's a reason for that. It's because I have a certain relationship with them.
00:27:21
Speaker
Yep. Excellent. I think there are two main things that come out to me here. One is, so if you think about the first kind of specific role, we are talking about our particular capacities, our limitations. And one thing to note here is that although it's difficult to be an excellent family member, excellent citizen, excellent neighbor, in some senses it's difficult. It's within nearly anyone's ability to do this.
00:27:51
Speaker
and that no one is prevented from being an excellent family member, citizen, neighbor, what have you, due to their natural capacities. That doesn't mean there won't be a different situation. Some things might be easier for others. What that looks like for a particular individual will differ, of course, because people are exceptionally different and their relationships will be different because of that fact. That's a good point, Kel. Just to add to that,
00:28:22
Speaker
There's no talent in being a good brother or a good neighbor. That's, that's your point is like, there's nothing. Anybody can do any of these, whereas not everybody can be a pro athlete. As Epictetus says, not everybody can be a Socrates can be Olympic champion. Maybe not everybody can be emperor of Rome, but everybody can be, you know, a good, a good dad or a good mother or something like this.
00:28:47
Speaker
Yep, yep.
Modern Views vs Stoic Traditionalism
00:28:49
Speaker
There's no ceiling that rolls out some people. So yeah, that's one point. The other point is on the
00:28:57
Speaker
issue of relationships generally. In some senses, the Stoics just were traditionalists in the sense that they thought we have unchosen bonds and bonds to our family and city that we need to respect even if we do not always like our family members or city.
00:29:21
Speaker
And in that sense, they're traditionalists. I remember meeting someone once who said that she didn't love her parents because she felt like her parents were the sort of people who, if she met them at a party, she wouldn't be that inclined to engage with them at all. They wouldn't become her friends.
00:29:36
Speaker
For the Stoics, they had a completely different view. They thought, you know, some of our relationships are chosen in that sense. They are acquired. Yeah, we do have friendships, but not all of them are. And we still have these duties of obligations to them regardless.
00:29:55
Speaker
That doesn't mean that the child should always follow what the parent says. Indeed, Musonius Rufus has a lecture on this, where their parents should always obey their children, and in so many words he says no. In some sense, I think the stoic view is similar to, I don't know if this has been drawn out before, perhaps I'll write a piece on it at some point, but it's similar to the Confucian idea of
00:30:22
Speaker
demonstration where subjects have a general duty to obey their rulers, but they also have a duty to object when their rulers are mistaken and to do that in a specific way that the ruler will hear and ideally come to change their view.
00:30:44
Speaker
Those are some thoughts on the traditionalist aspect of the relationship roles. What do you mean by traditionalist? You mean culturally conservative? What do you mean when you say that?
00:31:04
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose you could call it small c conservative. That's another word. I'm not sure if that's the best one. Maybe traditionalist isn't the best one either. But I do think there's over the past two centuries, at least in the West, people have become more individualist and people value autonomy more and they value chosen relationships over unchosen ones like being the families that close example. But also, if you don't like your city, you can move.
00:31:33
Speaker
And you see this in a number of different cultural products. I think many children's movies are essentially about kids rebelling against their parents and being justified in doing so. You see children moving away from
00:31:52
Speaker
their parents relatively early, moving them into nursing homes, which I think many previous generations would find pretty barbaric as a form of moral regress. And then alternatively, I think on the parent side, you see many parents not supporting their children perhaps as much as they should through their life.
00:32:12
Speaker
And that does have some serious advantages. People are more individualist and more responsible, they're free, they're less likely to be bound by the random constraints of some other person. But it does also have the cost of people failing what would be considered traditionalist or at least small c conservative duties. And perhaps I'll find a better word for this, but that's what I mean.
Role Ethics in Family and Relationships
00:32:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think I get what you mean. I mean, I thought the friend that your friend example was perfect. This idea of what could be more kind of autonomy or individualistic than like the people I owe obligations to are the people that I like. If I met them at a party and because of that, I know I would choose to be friends with them. That's kind of the criteria for love. That's the criteria. And I'm not to twist their words, but it, but that's the, that's an interesting way of approaching the situation. Whereas Epictetus is just making the simple point that
00:33:11
Speaker
Look, sometimes you might not like your family. They're still your family, right? You might not like your parents. They're still your parents, your brother, your sister. You might have issues with them. They're still your siblings. And there's a certain degree of responsibilities that come from that. And when you're reflecting on, what should I do? My brother's just done this terrible thing. What should I do? Well, the fact that they are your brother
00:33:35
Speaker
has something to do with your consideration, has something to do with your decision-making process there. And there are certain rules that come along with that or certain obligations that come along with that. And Epictetus here, he's leaving a bit on set because I think he thinks those would be pretty clear. But there's something to be said that we still have that idea 2000 years later. I think if we wrote down what do you owe your brother, you'd probably say, well,
00:33:59
Speaker
a bit more leniency, probably, you know, some extreme examples, you know, to support them if they needed help.
00:34:08
Speaker
to assist them if they needed help, these kinds of things, to forgive them in a way that's different from a friend or somebody that you just engaged with from your own choice. So there's these basic values that I guess you would take traditionalist view and the Stoics are just committed to that. I think it's an interesting thing to pull out and an important thing to pull out.
00:34:29
Speaker
And yeah, can be, can be helpful in that decision-making process too. It doesn't, it doesn't start you from a point of kind of zero, zero. It starts you from a point of, well, I have some things to lean on here when I'm navigating family dynamics. And I think that, I guess the more controversial point maybe would be that the Stoics made me think some of those traditionalist perspectives extend politically, extend into the relationship as a citizen, extend into the relationship between ruler and subject as well.
00:34:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's interesting. We should probably have a different conversation about that, because on one hand, that is a natural extension, but on the other hand, you think, well, the Stoics, essentially city-states, at least for the early Greeks, not like these large nation-states, and then of course, you see the adoption of cosmopolitanism as well, this idea that everyone is, in some sense, common. Everyone is a citizen of the world.
00:35:23
Speaker
So you do have both of those strains that are in tension. We'll move along, but we'll get back to that later in a different episode, maybe. So up to this point, we've gone through, you have the general role of a human being, the specific role of your talents, your dispositions, and your relationships. And the third category that's specific to you is that of choice.
00:35:49
Speaker
So finally, we can take on a role just through choice. So if it doesn't conflict with our relationships, if it doesn't conflict with our talents and dispositions, it doesn't conflict with being a person, then just pick one. And Epictetus says here, who do you wish to be? First, tell yourself that, then act accordingly in what you're doing.
00:36:14
Speaker
And Epictetus clarifies though, that, you know, this, as I said, this can't go against those other ones, but it's this kind of, it's this final, if there's no conflict on the way down, now it's just up to you. Just have some fun with it. Pick something. But I also think the point Epictetus is making here though, is that when you pick something, you're committing yourself to something and it's really important to live consistently. And you're kind of actually making an ethical failing when you don't act consistently.
00:36:41
Speaker
So if I can use an example, maybe we'd say, well, what do I want to do with myself? Well, I decide to be a writer. And then if you decide to be a writer, I imagine Epictetus would say, you know.
00:36:51
Speaker
Wake up early, write, commit yourself to doing that every day. Take criticism from people on your writing, even if it's difficult for you. Put yourself out there in a way that's vulnerable. Understand that you might fail as a writer for a certain period of time, but continue to release books or writings or blogs and don't let that dissuade you. Commit to this role. But if you say, well, I choose to be a writer, I'm going to be a writer, and then you don't do any of the things that come along with it,
00:37:20
Speaker
You're not just being impractical or ineffective. You're actually in a kind of way, I don't want to say pathetic, but you're living inconsistently in a way that I think would certainly, Epictetus might find pathetic. Because that inconsistency shows that you haven't really committed to this position with an understanding of what it entails. You're probably just picking it frivolously.
00:37:46
Speaker
There's a kind of, I guess the point I wanted to make is there's a kind of freedom that comes with your final role being based on choice, but there's a responsibility that comes with that. And the responsibility is to commit to that choice, live consistently with that choice. And if you don't do that, then you're failing yourself, you're failing the role and the kind of obligations that come along with that role.
Discovery vs Creation of Roles
00:38:11
Speaker
Yeah, this is where the possibility of autonomy does enter into the stoic sphere. So once you have recognized your potential capacities,
00:38:22
Speaker
and realize your relationships, then you can think about what are my preferences here. And I suppose one question I have here, to what extent do the Stoics think our preferences are a matter of creation or discovery? So do we, you know, does the writer discover that they are a writer or is it a sort of thing that someone can just choose to be?
00:38:50
Speaker
The way that I think about this, I mean, good question. The way that I think about this is I think I go back to that first one of kind of talents and dispositions. And so I think you might have a talent or disposition to be creative, to be a storyteller.
00:39:03
Speaker
to be somebody who inspires people, somebody who informs people. And then the writer is a way of actualizing that talent or that disposition. But you could also be a filmmaker. You could be, I don't know, maybe a politician. There's different ways of actualizing that talent or that disposition. So I think
00:39:25
Speaker
And that's why I talked about these talents and dispositions as being in a way they're kind of limiting, or there's a kind of floor that you have to reach to be certain things, and there's kind of a ceiling you have to clear that is to allow yourself to be certain things. But then I think once you're within that, you're allowed to just kind of choose what you want within it. That's the way I conceptualize it. What do you think? Yeah, well, yeah, I think that's exactly right.
00:39:50
Speaker
initial hoop you need to clear these initial capacities and that's certainly related to what you enjoy doing is correlated with what you're good at. There's certainly some amount of correlation there and
00:40:06
Speaker
I suppose I would say it seems like a mix of discovery and creation to me. So you're discovering what you're good at. You know, oftentimes we might try something and discover that. I thought I would like this, but turns out I don't or the reverse, which is why people
00:40:24
Speaker
advise doing internships in different fields in college, say, or something of that sort. Going to different classes to actually, you know, don't knock it until you've tried it. That's the sort of thought that you can discover what you want, what your preferences are. And then perhaps there are other ways in which we might just make a choice and then once we've made that choice,
00:40:51
Speaker
we could learn to enjoy the results of that decision. Yeah. My example is pretty discovery heavy. Figure out what you're designed for within a certain subsection of things you could possibly do. And your point is that we have the capacity to change ourselves. We have the capacity to learn to like things, to develop interests we didn't have before.
00:41:17
Speaker
I'm not sure, maybe I'll have to go back to the Epictetus or dig into it a bit further. I think a mix makes sense. Epictetus talks a lot about the power of habituation, talks a lot about the power of repeated action to kind of change our dispositions. He normally talks about that in terms of like being angry.
00:41:33
Speaker
You know, or vices, but presumably you could kind of do this in the other direction, which is like, you know, yeah, if I do this long enough, I can kind of figure out what I like about it. Right. And kind of, you know, take some joy in it. And there's something empowering that. And I think, as you said, Kel, just to reiterate for those listening.
00:41:49
Speaker
It sounds like we're only getting to autonomy at the very end, but in the practical picture, this is going to end up being quite a lot of things you get to choose from, right? It's things that you're pretty much disposed towards, you're good at and tend to like to do, and things that don't conflict with your role or social roles. Then other than that, everything else is on the table, right?
Role Ethics in Career and Conflict Resolution
00:42:13
Speaker
And that's really gonna leave a lot of options. But once you pick something off the table,
00:42:19
Speaker
Commit yourself to it. Be consistent in that. Now, so we went over the role ethic more generally. I want to do a specific example. So the roles we talked about, they tell us how to navigate the world of indifference. They tell us how to navigate the external choices we have to make about objects outside of our character. And I wanted to do an example of how career choice, this might look for career choice.
00:42:44
Speaker
So first, you know, I said, what do I want to do? Do I like my job? Or I'm just starting a job for the first time. You give the internship example, Caleb. So first you consider your natural role as a human. And this eliminates any evil jobs or any vicious jobs. It can't be a thief. It can't be a drug dealer. It can't be an assassin. It can't be a con man. And that's because that goes against my human roles. Then I consider my natural talents. What does it feel like I was made by nature to do?
00:43:12
Speaker
This is going to eliminate a lot of options, but it's going to leave a lot of options on the table too. I think about, you know, what am I talented at? What am I disposed towards? Then I consider my relationships. So are the remaining options, which best fit with my social relationships? So maybe I want a higher paying job to support my family. Maybe I want an easier job that lets me stay at home and spend more time with my family.
00:43:35
Speaker
Maybe I want to make my parents proud who have sacrificed a lot of money or a lot of their time to provide me with certain options. So I kind of take into consideration these pro-social rules. Maybe I want to be a doctor to help other people's lives, you know, help my community, right? You think about these kinds of things. And these are, these are fancy examples, you know, but, but maybe just, you know, you want to make sure that what you choose doesn't violate any of these.
00:44:02
Speaker
then you're left with a smaller subsection, and then Epictetus's point is it's up to you. You know, choose, pick one. The things that are left on the table, pick one. But as I said, pick it with commitment.
00:44:13
Speaker
They also tell us how to navigate. So that's a kind of personal existential question. What do I want to be? Who am I? That's a rules answer. But they also tell us how to navigate conflicts. So as we've talked about before, according to Epictetus, we owe something extra to our family. We owe something extra to our chosen friends, to those in our immediate social network. And that's information we should consider when making decisions.
00:44:38
Speaker
But they also, it also gives us a kind of a hierarchy of decision making criteria. So we don't owe anything to our family and friends that conflicts with our role as a human being, right? Conflicts with those four virtues you mentioned at the start, the four stoic virtues.
00:44:53
Speaker
So I think about a story or example of somebody who gets involved, you know, you see this in film a lot, somebody who gets involved in a gang with their brother or gets pulled into the dark side of their family, of the family business. And that's someone who overemphasizes the family role, but neglects the human role.
00:45:10
Speaker
And that's how the hierarchy of rules will tell us that's what's wrong with that. Or that's why your appeal, well, that's my brother. I should have done anything for him. Doesn't stack up because you're violating that higher rule of the human role. If you get into, you know, if you join a gang to be with your brother. Right. Right. Excellent. Do you think those examples stack up? Any, any, anything to add? Yeah, I think those examples stack up. Certainly. I think in terms of navigating conflict.
00:45:39
Speaker
If you're a virtue ethicist, you always ask, you know, what would the most virtuous person do here and what the role ethics can add to this as you can think of, what are my particular roles in this specific circumstance and what has been an excellent, say, coworker, being an excellent friend look like in this situation? And that can often help narrow down what's the right thing to do.
Universal Meaning in Ordinary Roles
00:46:05
Speaker
So that's that's one aspect I'd add and I think another aspect I'd add is sometimes there's a general sense of on we are Mean meaninglessness. I think a number of people face in their lives and it is sense in which the stomach say Meaning is not that hard to get all you need to do is Do the ordinary things and do them? excellently
00:46:33
Speaker
So the sorts of things that we're talking about really are, in some sense, mundane, be an excellent human, recognize your strengths and limitations, respect your relationships, make new ones, and then from there, choose and be consistent in your choices.
00:46:54
Speaker
These are not mysterious capabilities. They're not some call to be a hero that seems far too steep of a price to pay or something like this. Instead, these are ordinary things of an ordinary life where if we perform these roles as well as possible, we'll live an excellent life. And that's something that is geoble to anyone and can provide a source
00:47:23
Speaker
of meaning I think that's not too hard to get.
00:47:40
Speaker
You have a friend, right? Like, just be a good friend. You live next to somebody, just be a good neighbor. You live next, you have a job, just be a good coworker. You don't have any of those things. You have a family. Be good to your family.
00:47:57
Speaker
And in doing that, you're, you're fulfilling your roles and you're living a good life. You're being excellent. There's something really beautiful and empowering about that. We always have something to do well. In other words, we always have a purpose to live for and a purpose to live up to. Even if, as you said, we're not the hero on some grand journey, which in a way kind of throws us out of accordance with nature, right? Because not everybody can be a hero. It doesn't really make sense. As Epictetus says, not everybody can be Socrates.
00:48:27
Speaker
And so there's this kind of cognitive distortion of this feeling that you should be the superhero, but there's this real kind of joy, meaning, and purpose in just fulfilling the roles you already have really well. I never thought of it in that terms, but it's got me pumped up. Excellent. Call some friends after this. Yeah, that's right. So that's an overview of role ethics, and I tried to put some meat on the bones for something that can sometimes be a little obscure.
00:48:57
Speaker
I wanted to leave us off with a couple questions, reflections that I came up with after doing this. The first question I had, we hit on a bit, but how socially specific are given and acquired roles is what I'm left with after this. You're talking about being a traditionalist. Is the nature of a child or a parent, is that universally linked to all humans or is that culturally specific?
00:49:21
Speaker
Is this a way, in other words, are we building some relativism into stoicism by latching relationship ethics onto cultural norms or are we not? So is what it means to be a good anything, is that going to depend on the city we're in or is that going to stand the test of time?
Cultural Specificity and Creativity in Stoicism
00:49:43
Speaker
I think that's an interesting question. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. That's what I'm left wondering about, thinking about.
00:49:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's fine to leave that as a question. And it's something worth thinking about some more. Another way to put the question is, I think it's clear that stoicism, specifically virtue ethics more broadly, is context specific. Circumstances matter. And then of course, the question is just how much do they matter? How culturally specific are some of these roles?
00:50:21
Speaker
Yeah. And then another thought I had going through all ethics was I really love that stoicism leaves this space for personal creativity and creation. So not everything is this utilitarian calculus. There's this kind of pressure when you take on a consequentialist view of ethics or you take on utilitarianist view of ethics, which is to say, well, every decision I make has to be about maximizing the good. Every decision I make has to be about.
00:50:47
Speaker
helping others and limiting harm as much as possible. And there's something nice about that, but there's also something kind of depressing. I don't know. I think about this example, this utilitarian Superman, we'll talk about in Philosophy Undergrad, which is the idea of where if utilitarianism was true,
00:51:04
Speaker
that Superman would have an ethical obligation to just like spin in a circle and operate power turbines to generate power for as much of the world as possible. And any moment he was not generating power, he was committing a gross ethical harm. And it was a very weird way to look at life. And I think that's why I am attracted to virtue ethics in general, is that it still builds in being a good person, but provides some space for
00:51:32
Speaker
Autonomy for personal creation and creativity in that space and I love that Stoicism builds that in without being you know, it's both not the individualistic picture we were talking about it has that traditionalism but also You know leaves a lot of space for pick something just commit to it and then I find I find quite inspiring Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think and there's potentially some
00:51:59
Speaker
issues around, well, the utilitarian calculus is perhaps useful for political questions. You know, if you're thinking about what's the optimal tax policy or how should I manage dealing with the homeless problem in my city, it's sometimes harder to get a lot of
00:52:26
Speaker
mileage out of role ethics or virtue ethics for these more systemic problems. So perhaps that's where a more utilitarian mode of reasoning might be useful. But that's not to say that it's going to be the kind of reasoning you're going to use in all areas of your life.
00:52:47
Speaker
Let's not get rid of it now. Let's not throw the whole thing out. Some value for the systemic or maybe, maybe the right way to approach these larger issues, but not always the most satisfying. I had to, I just don't mean, I just don't like it for individual stuff. And I, and I.
00:53:02
Speaker
virtue ethic provides this alternative that has this creativity built into it. But the, but the role ethic has some, some concrete things to say about what we should do too. The last thing, which is kind of concern I have is I would like Epictetus to be a bit more clear about what constitutes a violation of our human role. So I can use the extreme example of, you know, don't join a murderous gang to like support your brother.
00:53:30
Speaker
But when we get a little bit hazier, a little bit messier, where do we draw that line between, well, I'm being a good friend, I'm being a good family member, I'm being a good citizen versus, well, now I'm doing something that goes against the four virtues, I would say. So I think that's a little hazy. It's also important to note here, I'm just saying this at the end of the podcast, Epictetus does not talk about the four virtues.
00:53:57
Speaker
very much at all, almost not at all. As someone who, myself, who studied Epictetus as the main stoic I dug into, I almost didn't realize how important these were to other people until I started reading other stoics. Epictetus does not really care about them. He almost exclusively replaces them with his royal ethics.
00:54:16
Speaker
And so that kind of conflict between human role and relationships, interesting one to me, and I wish that Epictetus would have explained it a bit better. Right, right. I think all of us are probably familiar with people we know or at least reading about people where they explained they were in a relationship and it was abusive and then they tell you the details and it remains unclear to you how the relationship was abusive. And it seems like, well, you probably got out of that.
00:54:46
Speaker
too quickly perhaps or at any rate, the other person may not have been the problem. On the other hand, there are also cases of you come across a case where someone is clearly in a relationship that's not working.
00:55:02
Speaker
It's either abusive or just not functioning well for whatever it's supposed to be, whether it's a working relationship or a romantic one and it can take people in those relationships years before they realize that sort of thing. And coming up with either principles or being able to build the
00:55:20
Speaker
ability to reason about those sorts of things when we might be in them, I think is a challenge for sure. So I think that you're hinting at, you know, there's always a question of am I missing something because of how close I am to the situation in either direction. Yeah, great point. Anything else you wanted to add on royal ethics?
00:55:42
Speaker
Let's see, so I think one last quote from Ephatias I think we should mention is the following from the discourses. We are like actors in the play. The divine will has assigned us our roles in life without consulting us. Some of us will act in a short drama, others in a long one.
00:56:09
Speaker
You might be assigned the parts of a poor person, a cripple, a distinguished figure or public leader or an ordinary, private citizen.
00:56:20
Speaker
I wanted to make sure we got that one in because you have this metaphor of being an actor in a play, this idea that so much of life is not up to us. What is up to us are managing our impressions, our decisions, and judgments. So I wanted to make sure we got that line in. Yeah, good ending to end on. Good to ruminate.
00:56:51
Speaker
Awesome. Great. Excellent. Thanks for listening. Yeah. Thanks everyone.
00:57:00
Speaker
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00:57:30
Speaker
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00:57:52
Speaker
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