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William Stephens on the 6 Core Themes of Stoicism (Episode 110)
975 Plays11 months ago
In this conversation, Caleb speaks with William O Stephens about his 6 core themes of Stoicism.
Epictetus’s 'Encheiridion': A New Translation and Guide to Stoic Ethics
(04:12) Self-Control
(09:31) Seeing Things As They Are
(14:34) Living In Accordance With Nature
(22:12) Role Ethics
(35:57) Virtue Depends On Knowledge
(42:59) Stoicism Is Aspirational
***
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Transcript
Introduction to Stoic Realism
00:00:00
Speaker
So this is just straight up stoic realism. Seeing things for how they are, not for how you wish they were, not for how you're fantasizing they might be, or could be if other things were different, other things beyond your control went your way, right? So seeing things as they are, the world is going to do what the world does. The things that are not up to you are going to roll along and unfold the way they do.
Live Virtual Course Announcement
00:00:29
Speaker
Welcome to Stoa Conversations. In this conversation, I speak with William O. Stevens about the six core themes of stoicism. Before hopping into that, I should say that we are kicking off our live virtual course next week. So visit stoameditation.com slash course and sign up. It'll be an excellent way to kick off
00:00:56
Speaker
the year, so both Michael and I are very excited to do it. The key focus of the course is applying Stoicism to daily living for a more calm, resilient, and ultimately virtuous life. If you're the kind of person who enjoys this podcast, you'll get a lot of value out of it. So check it out at stoameditation.com slash course.
00:01:25
Speaker
And here is our conversation.
Conversation with William O. Stevens
00:01:29
Speaker
Welcome to Stowe Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros, and today I am speaking with William O. Stevens. I was chatted with William a number of times before. We have episode 26 on Epictetus's handbook, and most recently, episode 94 on Musonius Rufus, and that's on his discussions of food and nature.
00:01:54
Speaker
Today, we're going to be focusing on the six core themes of Stoicism. These are the themes that are covered in William's most recent book, Epictetus in Caridian, and that's with Professor Scott Aiken as well.
Six Core Themes of Stoicism
00:02:12
Speaker
Well, thanks again for joining. Always good to have you on. Happy to be with you, Caleb.
00:02:18
Speaker
So I suppose we'll start here. What was the process for thinking through what the six core themes of stoicism you decided to present on with Scott Aiken?
00:02:31
Speaker
Scott, yeah. Well, we were discussing how we wanted to introduce the core of the book, which is the new translation, which is not very many pages, of course, and then our detailed commentary, which is really the bulk of the book and the heart of the book.
00:02:51
Speaker
But we wanted to set the stage. And so we tried to figure out the best way to do that with the kind of several introductory parts of the book. Setting the stage with the history and the impact and influence and the reception of the handbook was one chapter that we wanted to make sure to have. But introducing stoicism more broadly
00:03:20
Speaker
We thought it would be handy to isolate what we saw as six central themes, six core themes of Epictetus's brand of Stoicism, his brand of Roman Stoicism, and of course, as an instance of Stoicism in general.
00:03:41
Speaker
uh, for our readers.
Self-Control vs. Self-Indulgence
00:03:43
Speaker
And so this, this guidebook, this guide that we've created is for both the instructors and their students to help them navigate their way through, uh, really one of the most influential stoic texts in the history of Western philosophy, namely Epictetus and Caridian. So these are the six core themes that we chose to package that kind of first encounter with Epictetus in.
00:04:12
Speaker
Excellent, nice. Well, so our first theme then is this idea of self-control. And I think it's one that'll be familiar to many listeners who are interested in Stoicism, maybe consider themselves to practitioners as well. There's always that idea, you know, would you have a great empire rule over yourself? This sort of line that runs through Stoicism and also several of the other ancient Greek philosophies.
00:04:41
Speaker
How would you describe what's your spin on self-control in psoasism? Yes, very good. Yeah, so this is the one we picked first. And I think part of the motivation for beginning with this one is to contrast a very common popular notion in our culture of self-indulgence with self-control.
00:05:11
Speaker
And the quotation that you just shared is spot on, right? If you want to control your world, you got to begin with yourself, right? And beginning with yourself and learning stoicism, what you learn very quickly, if you have it already, is that you don't really control your world. You try to manage your world the best you can.
00:05:35
Speaker
But when it comes to control, you really just have yourselves. You have what's between your ears, right? What's going on between your ears? And when people are outward looking, as they, I don't know, naturally are, I suppose, commonly are, certainly in our culture, they look for the answer to the problems to come from outside them, right?
00:06:00
Speaker
My coworkers are mistreating me. My boss doesn't appreciate me, won't give me a raise, right? Driving down the highway, I've got all these other obstacles in cars. Other motorists are problems for me. They're slowing me down. They're getting in my way. They're endangering me. Whatever it is, family, friends, strangers, coworkers, other people are seen as impediments to getting things done, getting what you want, right?
00:06:30
Speaker
But the focus of self-control was that happiness is a state of mind. It's a state of character for Epictetus and the Stoics. And so the very notion of thinking that happiness derives from things external to you is a confusion.
00:06:49
Speaker
It's a confusion, right? If happiness is a state of mind, then you have to have your mind in the right way in order to experience a smooth flow of life, in order to have a kind of tranquility, a kind of equanimity. These are the goals for the stoic, and that's to be achieved through self-control. And so you've got to get a grip on your desires and your beliefs. And if you get a grip on your desires and your beliefs,
00:07:17
Speaker
and you focus your energies on getting those in order, proper mental hygiene as it were, then you will have informed judgments and informed valuations of the events that occurred to you.
00:07:34
Speaker
And if you practice this diligently, day in and day out, week in and week out, month after month, year after year, you can make progress toward achieving greater happiness and not be thwarted in your desires, not be frustrated in your expectations. All of this follows upon self-control. So desires have to be things that you understand as
00:08:00
Speaker
mental activities that are up to you to use Epictetus's phrase, right? You have to control your desires. If you have bad desires, just to put it very bluntly, if you have dangerous desires or even the wrong desires, then you're going to pay a price.
Stoic Appreciation of Life
00:08:21
Speaker
The consequences of having poorly informed desires, bad beliefs, unsupported beliefs,
00:08:29
Speaker
is going to be frustration, fear, anger, disappointment, envy. These are the negative emotions that are going to come from a lack of self-control. So this is the first theme that we try to articulate in that section of the book.
00:08:48
Speaker
Yeah, I think on one level, many people, even many non-stoics will agree that, of course, happiness isn't just a matter of externals. And yet it does seem like so much of our ordinary life is engineered around consumption or even simple conversations about how was your day. We refer to events in the day, things that happened to us rather than, you know, my day went well because I made excellent decisions and judgments.
00:09:17
Speaker
I reacted admirably to the events that occurred that happened to me today, right? Focusing on our reactions, right? And our valuations of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose that ties into nicely the second theme.
00:09:35
Speaker
Seeing things as they are which is a goal to sort of orient oneself what what should control there's always that question What are you controlling for the sake of what's the purpose and if you're thinking about your judgments? Well the purpose of your judgments see things as they are pursue knowledge. Yes, exactly that more
00:09:56
Speaker
Exactly. So this is just straight up stoic realism. Seeing things for how they are, not for how you wish they were, not for how you're fantasizing they might be, or could be if other things were different, other things be under control, went your way, right? So seeing things as they are, the world is going to do what the world does. The things that are not up to you are going to roll along and unfold the way they do.
00:10:25
Speaker
And Stoics recognize that while self-control is up to you, the other things up to you that we've mentioned, belief, judgment, evaluation, these things have to be in accord with, they have to harmonize with the facts of the world.
00:10:49
Speaker
And those facts include our human limitations. And again, in our culture, we recoil against this, right? Many people think it's positively rude to talk about death. That this makes people very uncomfortable and they squirm and they think it's discourteous somehow.
00:11:10
Speaker
or gauche to talk about people, you know, at any length of time, dealing with illness or infirmity or disability or mortality. And Stokes recognized that
00:11:27
Speaker
These things are real. They're not going to go away. And so stoicism is a reaction to the ostrich sticking its head in the sand, right? Actually, as I understand it, and I might be wrong here, but don't ostriches do that because they want to hear predators galloping up on them or something? Do they listen? I don't know. I don't know how much ostriches actually stick their head in the sand.
00:11:52
Speaker
You take my point, right? Reality is not going to go away just because you close your eyes and cover your ears. And so starting with that firm grasp of seeing things as they truly are allows you to recognize how to make your reactions and your choices congruent with the realities that we cannot change. And so Stoics embrace those realities.
00:12:21
Speaker
They embrace them, right? And instead of thinking of death and limitation as some sort of horrible doom scenario, recognizing that we're not gods means that we can appreciate moments in our lives as even more precious because they are fleeting.
00:12:41
Speaker
Right? When you have a tender moment with your child or you share an affectionate, you know, intimate kiss or moment with your spouse or partner or an expression of love with one of your parents that's reciprocated.
00:13:02
Speaker
or a pat on the back from one of your friends, or you're giving your friend a pat on the back because you're like spirits, right? I mean, these moments of human connection are special because you ought not to take them for granted because not everyone does enjoy them every day.
Living According to Nature
00:13:24
Speaker
And they're not going to last forever, which means that you appreciate them. You appreciate them all the more. So this is a common misconception about stoics, that they don't smell the roses. Good grief. You better believe that the stoics smell the roses, right? Because they know that the bloom comes off the rose in time, that roses lose their petals.
00:13:50
Speaker
It's December now, right? And so in many parts, you're in California, and I'm here in Arizona, so our weather is not all that cold and frosty, probably, right? But in much of North America, they're having snow and cold weather, and the green plants have turned to brown, and so this is the seasonal change. Change is the constant, right? The Stoics very much follow Heraclitus on that front, right? The only thing that doesn't change is that there's always change.
00:14:20
Speaker
And so adapting to these changes is again part of seeing things as they are and recognizing that your human flourishing is certainly possible despite these changes beyond our control.
00:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Another aspect of the world is nature and recognizing that there's a nature to things. And this third theme you have is living according to nature. How do you think about that phrase in Stoicism? What role does it play? It's a very rich concept. It's a very rich concept, right? So you have multiple layers when it comes to the meaning of nature for the Stoics.
00:15:03
Speaker
At the broadest scope, the broadest context, is the universe, nature with a capital N. The universe, the cosmos as a whole. And the Stoics, of course, like most ancient philosophers, believe that cosmos, right, world order, is an orderly thing. It's not just random events.
00:15:29
Speaker
there is a rhyme and a reason to it. And discerning that, of course, is going to be part of seeing things as they are. So living according to nature in the widest sense means living according to what some call the laws of nature, right? You can't fight gravity.
00:15:49
Speaker
And so the things that occur in the world, you have to accept. Everything that occurs in the world, you have to accept. Spring, summer, fall, and winter, day and night.
00:16:01
Speaker
There's also plenty when you've got plenty of food and there are famines, right? There's health and wellness and there's also diseases and sickness. All of these things are gonna happen in the world. There's economic boom times and downturns and busts, right? So living according to nature means accepting the things that happen in the world and then responding accordingly to them. Okay, so how do you respond accordingly to them?
00:16:29
Speaker
The next layer of nature is our nature as the kind of animals that we are. As animals, we share a lot in common with fellow mammals, right?
00:16:42
Speaker
All animals and all mammals have to eat, they have to drink, they have to sleep, and it's according to nature to have impulses to procreate and reproduce, right? So recognizing that these sorts of human appetites, these sorts of human desires are natural is what's going on at this level. So it's not up to you never to get hungry.
00:17:08
Speaker
That's beyond your control. It's not up to you never to need a nap, never to need to sleep, right? Be careful not to dehydrate yourself. Make sure to drink water and the right sort of beverages, right? So taking care of these animal needs, this is nature at the next level.
00:17:28
Speaker
At the third level, you've got our specific human nature as a certain kind of primate. So we are very social animals. We are linguistic animals. We are political animals.
00:17:43
Speaker
right, as human beings. And so living in agreement with nature or living according to nature as humans means living in accordance with our specific human endowment, our gift from nature, our constitution.
00:18:01
Speaker
And for the Stoics, this is principally gonna be our cognition, our intelligence, our higher mental faculties, our faculty of reason. So living in agreement with nature means living in agreement with our human reason. And this is transformative for the Stoics, right? Given their account of oichiosis, this notion of affinity or appropriation, depending on how we wanna translate it. When we mature into young adulthood,
00:18:29
Speaker
this actualization of our mere potential to be rational occurs. And this transforms our work because we identify ourselves not so much with our bodies, not primarily with our bodies and our bodily needs as infants and children do, but with our minds, with our intelligence, with our cognitive needs.
00:18:52
Speaker
and our cognitive powers. So this is extremely important to recognize living in agreement with reason as a special case of living in agreement with nature. And then with Epitetus, we even have this fourth layer of living in agreement with our own individual talents and abilities as
00:19:16
Speaker
individual human beings as persons, right? And so living in agreement with my nature as Stevens might differ from you living in agreement with your nature as Caleb, right? Why? Well, because we have a lot in common, but you have talents that I may lack. I might have some skills and abilities and tendencies which you may lack.
00:19:42
Speaker
And so Petita speaks to this in the handbook when he says, oh, you want to be an Olympic athlete. Great. And you want to be what? You want to be a wrestler? Okay. Well, what should you do then? Steep things as they are and look at your, look at your hips. Look at your waist. Look at your body. Do you have the body that you could productively train to become an excellent wrestler?
00:20:08
Speaker
If you're tall and lean and you have long legs and arms, but you're very thin, this is not going to be the sport for you. This won't be the profession to pick, right? Because it's not your nature to get down there with broad shoulders and broad hips and strong arms, right? And wrestle with people, right? Maybe you should look into becoming a runner.
00:20:31
Speaker
with long legs, a very lean build. So this is the sort of thing that he has in mind when he talks about living agreement with our individual
Virtue and Social Roles
00:20:40
Speaker
nature. And Cicero speaks to this with a four person theory, but Epitetus has an even more robust theory of Rawls, which is, oh,
00:20:49
Speaker
That's our fourth core theme, isn't it? Yeah, that's our fourth one. Yeah, that's excellent. Well, I should remark on just how much I love this fractal nature of Stoic philosophy, where you have at the largest scale, you have those aspects of reason, order, and then also the idea of providence or the telos, two things. And I think those two handles
00:21:15
Speaker
of thinking about how things are ordered, thinking about their telos, that aspect of value, and thinking about how those matter for the different levels of our nature. So for example, at the largest scale, of course, for the traditional Stoics you have
00:21:32
Speaker
order providence. Once you zoom into, say, that human nature, you have our reason is how rationalities manifest, but we're also social animals. And you can sort of see how the idea of telos and providence plays out at that level as well. And then, of course, once you get into our individual
00:21:52
Speaker
That's where the question of roles comes into play and of course our pro-social nature and our ability to reason, think clearly, see things as they are is going to manifest themselves in different ways given the details of who we are, our lives, where we happen to live in, who we're surrounded with, and so on.
00:22:12
Speaker
Yeah, excellent. Well, let's jump into roles then. That's the fourth theme. Our virtue depends on our duties, which are defined by our roles. Yes. So here the idea is you have to know what your roles are, and then knowing what they are, you need to do the duties that flow from them, that attach to those roles.
00:22:37
Speaker
And at a glance, you might think, oh, well, everybody knows who their roles are. Really? Really? I'm not so sure. I myself often lose sight of one role or another because I've been grossed in one matter or another. So if you live in proximity to others, if you live in an apartment building or a condominium complex,
00:23:05
Speaker
And there isn't really wonderful sound abatement between the walls or in the hallways or even outside. You're reminded that one role you have is that of a neighbor.
00:23:20
Speaker
You live close to other people. And so knowing your role here involves partly recognizing that when you have this shared space, you need to be mindful of your duty to observe quiet hours and be considerate of your close neighbors.
00:23:42
Speaker
You're not an island, you're not living in isolation. Most people don't live outside of urban centers, way, way, way out in rural areas. Some few do, but the vast majority of people, and increasingly demographically, this is a trend that's been going on for decades.
00:24:02
Speaker
The vast majority of people live in very large urban centers that sprawl. And so knowing your role as a neighbor, as a citizen, this is vital in order to live as a good citizen and behave as you ought to and behave as a good neighbor and sharing things with your neighbors appropriately.
00:24:24
Speaker
But there's so many other roles involving work and recreation and travel. If you hop on a subway train, you immediately assume the role of a traveler, of a train traveler. And again, you're sharing a small space in this train car with other travelers, and you need to be mindful of their needs.
00:24:49
Speaker
and how you should be considerate in interacting with them. And even exercising the opportunity to chat up a stranger so that you don't feel socially isolated, right? Whereas we see all the time in big cities, people have their sound canceling headphones on. Well, that's understandable because they want to protect their ears and they're doing their own thing and that's fine.
00:25:15
Speaker
But that shouldn't rule out taking advantage of the opportunity to chat up a stranger and recognize that this is what? A fellow human being and a fellow traveler and maybe a fellow worker and maybe a fellow parent or sibling or child, right? So that we can battle this kind of social isolation that's become such a problem in the United States in recent times, especially during COVID and post-COVID.
00:25:42
Speaker
But we also have professional roles that we have with fiduciary responsibilities, right? Are you a patient or a healthcare giver, right? Are you a client or a care provider, right? So we've got myriad roles. There are dozens of them. Some only last for minutes. Some last for hours. Some last for weeks. But of course, many roles that we have also last for a lifetime.
00:26:09
Speaker
or at least for decades. And so figuring out which roles we can voluntarily pick up because they're going to promote our lives and help us achieve good things, acting in other virtues, using the talents that we have.
00:26:26
Speaker
deciding which roles to undertake and for how long before setting them aside, either for a time or perhaps permanently, right? And then of course, so we've got the natural roles and we've got the acquired roles. You're born as a human being, that's permanent until you die, right? You're born as a son or a daughter. You're born as a sibling, perhaps. You don't choose any of those roles that you're born into in terms of your genetic inheritance, right?
00:26:55
Speaker
But which friends you choose to have, those are chosen roles that you have. Which career, which profession, which job to have and pursue, those are going to be chosen roles. And so our duties are going to flow from these. And for Epictetus, figuring out what your duties are, if you have squarely in mind what your roles are, isn't rocket science.
00:27:22
Speaker
He thinks that with this notion of what Prolep says, these preconceived notions is sort of intuitive. That's the way we would put it, right? It's intuitive what your duties are as a son or a friend or a boss, right? Looking over employees, if you're a supervisor, what duties do you have?
00:27:47
Speaker
to look out for them, to make sure that your workplace is safe and is healthy and people feel like they're comfortable and you're empowering them to contribute to the company or to the organization or institution. If you're a teacher, if you're a student, knowing what your duties are, these you can figure out, especially if you've got a mentor to help you, which is another vital
Knowledge and Virtue
00:28:08
Speaker
role. And of course, after Titus's role that he chose to devote the vast majority of his time to was to be a teacher.
00:28:16
Speaker
Right. And teaching stoicism to others to improve their lives.
00:28:21
Speaker
So one question I have here is how, if we adopt this idea that adopting our roles is generally intuitive, thinking about what our roles ought to be is generally intuitive, so long as- The duties come intuitively, largely. Yeah, so once you've adopted a role, then the duties come intuitively. But I guess there's this question.
00:28:48
Speaker
when you're thinking about the level of adopting roles, there's a wide variety of how these roles have been realized throughout history, which sorts of roles are seen as good ones, there are different social arrangements. So on the face of it, this seems like this gives stoicism some amount of flexibility, sensitivity to different cultures, different material circumstances.
00:29:13
Speaker
which has its advantages, but also there's this worry that, well, maybe there are some cultures where the general, you know, there are some serious problems in the roles of society, right? And, you know, how do you think about that balancing what might be a kind of
00:29:32
Speaker
almost small Sikh conservatism you sometimes see in the Stoics, you know, following these traditional roles, which has its advantages, has its wisdom in it, but also with the worry that perhaps, you know, we ought to really be thinking about structuring our social arrangements differently. How do you think about that? Excellent question. Just truly excellent question. Thank you. Yes. So vital to remember that the Stoics are committed to justice and they're committed to virtue.
00:30:02
Speaker
Wisdom, justice, courage, temperance, generosity, and piety as they understand it. All of these things are of the highest value and are never to be traded for mere preferred indifference like social status or wealth, popularity, or fame, or pleasure.
00:30:27
Speaker
Right? All of those other preferred indifference are nothing, are trivial compared to the pursuit of virtue and maintaining and preserving virtue. And so a common misunderstanding of stoicism is this kind of social apathy
00:30:50
Speaker
that stoics are passive. They don't care about unjust institutions. They don't care about unjust social arrangements. They don't care about patriarchy, sexism, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia. They don't care about any of those things except their own happiness. This is still wrong, right? Because the stoic dedicates herself above all
00:31:18
Speaker
to living virtuously. And that means working to reform injustice on every front, on every front, working within systems that are imperfect to improve them. But also, if it's the case that an arrangement, an institution or system, is
00:31:47
Speaker
irreparable, if it's incorrigible, then it has to be replaced. It has to be replaced. Justice demands it. And so as I see it, Stoics, very much on the theoretical level and entirely on the practical level, are committed to social justice, period, full stop. In their own society, between nation states,
00:32:16
Speaker
at the local level, at the state regional level, at the national level and internationally. And so this includes environmental injustice. This includes battling global climate change. This includes speaking out against and working hard to abolish slavery in the world today, right?
00:32:40
Speaker
We don't think there are any slaves in the United States, and yet we have, in the news you find child trafficking rings that are discovered, right? People who are abducted, and there's certainly slavery outside the United States going on too. Stoics are fundamentally opposed to injustice wherever it occurs. To have a laissez-faire attitude about injustice is to fail to be a stoic.
00:33:11
Speaker
It's to not be dedicated to achieving virtue in oneself and doing everything you can to promote it in others.
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So certainly Stoics are committed to justice. And I guess there's always a question, well, what does that mean? And of course, they're going to be discussion, debate, some justifiably complex, others perhaps not so justifiably seen as complex about what that amounts to. But I guess one of the key takeaways that I would add is when you're thinking about these roles, yes, you have virtues that shouldn't be sacrificed, but you can also think of
00:33:49
Speaker
thinking of your roles as a hierarchy. And if you think about fundamentally as a human being, you're going to be required to pursue knowledge and act in pro-social ways. And if you find a role that violates that, that is very, you know, that just shows that that is a social role that does not contain virtue in it. I don't know if you have anything else to add to that.
00:34:16
Speaker
Yeah, I would just say not only would you have to jettison any role that conflicts with that cosmopolitan role of being a rational being in a large cosmopolis of other rational beings, recognizing them as your fellow citizens, which I think has to include a strong notion of egalitarianism.
00:34:36
Speaker
when it comes to rights and respect and treatment of other people. But even choosing between roles that better promote the health and well-being and cooperation of the cosmopolis and those that less promote that cosmopolis, I think Astoic would opt for the former, assuming that he or she has the talents and the abilities to do that more impactful role better, more successfully.
00:35:07
Speaker
Some people are going to have beautiful voices and choosing to be singers is going to be an entirely appropriate thing for them, but that doesn't rule out being active as a community organizer. Cosmopolitanism definitely feeds into that notion of hierarchy when it comes to sorting through roles and helping adjudicate between some that might be in tension.
00:35:33
Speaker
And there will be roles that come into attention with other roles. You can't do everything all at once. You just can't. So you have to make hard decisions about prioritizing certain roles at certain times over others. And the faculty of reason and the promotion of virtue and justice can help make those adjudications, I think.
00:35:57
Speaker
All right, right. Excellent. So now moving on to the fifth theme, having virtue depends on knowing, depends on knowledge. What's the upshot of this? Yeah, this is very important for the stories. Of course, historically, they're challenged by some of the smartest philosophers that have ever existed, not just in the ancient world, but in the history of Western thought. And those are the skeptics.
00:36:25
Speaker
And the skeptics really gave the ancient Stoics the what-for. They challenged the Stoics to come up with better arguments, stronger arguments, defensible doctrines in their philosophy. And the Stoics responded the best they could.
00:36:44
Speaker
Virtually depends on knowing a lot of things. It depends on knowing what your roles are, knowing your duties, knowing the different senses of nature so that you can live in accordance with it, knowing how things work, knowing science insofar as an ignorance of science would make your life miserable in the long run. So understanding, understanding science is crucial for living an informed life as a stoic.
00:37:12
Speaker
And so virtue requires all of these kinds of knowledge, not just ethical knowledge, but knowledge of what the Stoics called physics, right? What we today would call metaphysics after Aristotle. How the world works, right? What human nature is, medicine, epidemiology. We all had to learn a little bit about epidemiology, didn't we? Back in 2020 to survive the COVID pandemic.
00:37:40
Speaker
And so stoicism is about developing true and justified beliefs. And so you have to gain these beliefs. You have to be able to weigh evidence for and against claims, evaluate them using your empirical resources, using your own faculty of judgment, using your knowledge of logic,
00:38:10
Speaker
to get stronger epistemically, to become a kind of epistemologist who isn't going to make hasty, bad decisions on the basis of incomplete knowledge and dangerous ignorance. Ignorance is going to stand in the way of becoming virtuous.
00:38:32
Speaker
And so the only way to overcome that ignorance is by replacing weak beliefs, unsupported beliefs, beliefs with little evidence or no evidence in support of them with better beliefs, truer beliefs.
Aspirational Stoicism
00:38:45
Speaker
And this requires doing epistemology the right sort of way and responding very seriously to the challenges that the skeptics pose to stoic physics, stoic logic, and stoic ethics.
00:39:01
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I suppose this is a way, it's not justice, we can't be understood as an extension of seeing things as they are, where you have that all important. What does that mean that has this important epistemic duty?
00:39:16
Speaker
almost, but also has this the centrality of knowledge isn't just a duty, but it's fundamentally I think how virtue is realized for the Stoics, right? You can't be courageous unless you know the difference between reckless actions and cowardly ones and brave ones to say that. Indeed. It's knowledge that makes a difference between virtue and vice.
00:39:47
Speaker
Exactly. That's a fine example. To be courageous, you have to know what is to be feared and what is not to be feared, right? The bully is not to be feared. Unpopularity in school is not to be feared. What the Stoic would fear, in scare quotes, is not being true to yourself.
00:40:08
Speaker
betraying a friend, that's to be feared in the sense of being avoided at all costs, right? Lying, cheating, stealing, stabbing people in the back, right? Lacking authenticity. These are the things that the stoic avoids at all costs because they're vicious and they will guarantee misery, right? So, yeah.
00:40:38
Speaker
You have to know when it comes to wisdom, right? What is wisdom? They define wisdom as knowledge of what is good, what is bad, and what's neither good nor bad. Virtue is good, vice is bad, and everything else is neither good nor bad. So if you're going to become wise, you have to have that knowledge, right? Courage is what's to be feared, what's not to be feared.
00:41:02
Speaker
And justice is what people deserve, giving to people, distributing to people what they deserve. So all of these definitions of virtues involve a kind of knowing. And so that's why knowing is indispensable for Christoax. And the goal, of course, and then the other thing I have to say about this is that, don't know that human beings are fallible.
00:41:28
Speaker
We do make mistakes. We are going to make mistakes. Nobody is perfect. Why? Wanting perfection is not foolish. This is what gets us into the aspirationalism, which we're getting to next. But remember that the paradigm, the role model of all Stoics is the stage. The stage has only true beliefs. The stage only exercises good judgments.
00:41:58
Speaker
The sage has all of her values correct. All of her priorities are correct. And so there's some debate over whether the early stoics thought that the sage was actually omniscient, knew all things. But it's certainly the case that the sage has rooted out from her set of beliefs all of those false beliefs that she can.
00:42:22
Speaker
that are possible to root out, right? Get rid of false belief. This is the goal. And so even if it's not achievable for human beings, even if none of us can become sages, we can strive for this pre-scriptive ideal of sagehood.
00:42:39
Speaker
And we do that by getting rid of as many false beliefs as we can and increasing our knowledge along the way. And as we live and learn and we gain more knowledge, we approach gradually, a little bit at a time, this destination, this high bar of becoming a sage.
00:42:59
Speaker
Right, yeah, I suppose this is the sixth theme, which is that stoicism is aspirational. The sage is someone we aspire to become. It's a target, an ideal. Is it something we can never reach, or becoming a sage? Is that a feasible, feasible mission, in your view?
00:43:24
Speaker
Yeah, we can't say. Let's remember our epistemic humility here. What can we know and what can't we know? Well, we don't know the future. And so, you know, if we're being very careful here from a stoic perspective, we can't say, oh, we know we'll never be a sage. Well, you can't know that. That would be a future state of affairs that's beyond your knowledge, right?
00:43:53
Speaker
So we can't know that we would become sages, but we also can't know that we won't ever become sages. What we do know is that if we don't try to make progress in our beliefs, with our judgments, with our disciplined
00:44:11
Speaker
therapies of self scrutiny and reflection at the end of every day, reviewing what you did well and what you did poorly, the mistakes you made, the lessons you learned, right? If we don't put in the effort, we know that we won't make progress and we won't become sages. But if we do try, then over time in the long run, we might come close.
00:44:36
Speaker
we might come close and there's reason not to be pessimistic about that. So yeah, stoicism is this kind of aspirationalist view or what some people call a kind of perfectionism, right? Aspirationalism. So whereas Kant taught that a lot implies can, if you ought to do something, then that logically implies that you can do it. Stoics turn this around.
00:45:04
Speaker
And look at it differently. They believe that ought implies inspire. If you ought to be a better person, if you ought to be more just and more wise, then you can aspire to be more just than you are right now. You can aspire to be more virtuous than you are right now. You can aspire to have greater wisdom. Set that as your goal and work toward it.
00:45:30
Speaker
And progress isn't quick and it's not easy, but over time it's possible. If you're dedicated, if you're patient, if you're fortunate and you have the support of others in your network, in your family circles, in your circle of friends and associates, you can get help along the way.
00:45:53
Speaker
And you can make progress, and that is a worthy goal, making progress. And it's fueled by the right kind of aspirations. So aspirations for the right thing are admirable, and the Stoics commend aspiring to be a better person. And I really think that this makes Stoicism a noble philosophy. I find it to be ennobling for just this reason.
00:46:23
Speaker
that instead of thinking of human beings and focusing on us as being fundamentally flawed, we know in the history of Christianity, we're taught that human beings originally sin. And this is part of the human nature, to be imperfect, to be broken, to be sinful. Stoics choose instead to see the glass as half full.
00:46:53
Speaker
Human beings are powerful, or they can make themselves power. Nobody is born gristling with muscles, and yet bodybuilders, athletes, weightlifters go into the gym, they put in the time, they eat a good diet, and week in and week out, they make progress toward building up their physiques.
00:47:16
Speaker
If we think about how much time some people devote to their physical health and their physical fitness and how big in circumference their biceps and triceps are and how rock-hard their abdomens are, all the time an effort that many human beings pour into getting stronger, bitter, brawnier bodies.
00:47:42
Speaker
And then you compare that with how much time people spend being epistemically humble and careful and evaluating beliefs, right? We've got the time to do a lot more mental work and make progress on that front. And that's what Stoics urge us to do. More online good. To benefit ourselves and everyone around us. If we enhance our own virtue, everyone around us benefits from us being a better person. And we live happier lives too.
00:48:13
Speaker
Right, right. Yep. And then they're always urging us and themselves to, yes, aspire to be the sage and then act right now, you know, you have to assemble your life yourself, action by action. Marcus Aurelius. Outstanding. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's up to us every moment. Make the best of every moment. How can you turn it to good use?
00:48:37
Speaker
This is the resourcefulness that the Stoics emphasize. We have this ability and we can strengthen it. We can learn how to become more resource, more adaptive. And we need to be able to adapt these days more than ever. There are so many different threats and dangers. We have to be able to be light on our feet, roll with bunches, and adapt to overcome these challenges.
00:49:05
Speaker
to surmount them. And it requires cooperation and diligence and perseverance, all of those virtues. And so good grief, is there a better thing to aspire to? I don't know what it would be. Stories are not opposed to beauty either, right? So let's make the world a more beautiful place. Let's pitch in and do that. Let's make it more just. Let's make it safer. Let's make it smarter, right?
00:49:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's good stuff. It's fun talking about stoicism. Yeah, I think that's a, that's an excellent spot to end. So thanks. Thanks so much for coming back on. And is there anything else you'd like to add as we, we finish up? No. Thank you for your time.
00:49:48
Speaker
Thank you very much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or rate our podcast if you haven't already on Spotify or Apple podcasts. Finally, do check out our live virtual course, Stoicism Applied. Find it on maven.com or by going to stoameditation.com slash course. If you're keen on applying the teachings of stoicism to your life in order to live,
00:50:17
Speaker
a more calm, resilient, and a virtuous one. And you're also a fan of this podcast. There's a very high probability you'll get a lot of value from it. And both Michael and I enjoy meeting and interacting with our podcast listeners. So do check that out. Until next time.