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Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy
3 Plays1 month ago
In this episode, I chat with Commander William C. Spears. William is a submarine warfare officer in the United States Navy, and author of the upcoming book Stoicism as a Warrior Philosophy. He enlisted in the Navy in June 2001, then earned his commission through the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. He has since led a career in nuclear submarines, where he was most recently the second-in-command of a ballistic missile submarine. Today he works at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.
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Transcript
Introduction to Guests and Topics
00:00:01
Donald Robertson
Hello and welcome to Stoicism, Philosophy is a Way of Life. My name is Donald Robertson and today's guest is Commander William C. Spears. William is a submarine warfare officer in the United States Navy and author of the upcoming book, Stoicism
Spears' Naval Career and Stoic Discovery
00:00:17
Donald Robertson
is a Warrior Philosophy.
00:00:17
William
Thank
00:00:18
Donald Robertson
He enlisted in the Navy in June 2001, then earned his commission through the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. He's since led a career in nuclear submarines, where he was most recently the second in command of a ballistic missile submarine.
00:00:33
Donald Robertson
Today, he works at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. William, do you want to read your DoD statement before we begin?
00:00:41
William
Yeah, thank you, Donald. It's important that I say ahead of time that anything I say here is my opinion alone and doesn't necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of the Department of the Defense or the Department of Defense or any of its components.
00:00:55
William
Thanks.
00:00:57
Donald Robertson
Well, let's dive right in. Do want to tell us a little bit about your background and how you became interested in Stoic philosophy?
00:01:04
William
Sure, Donald. i i didn't come to be a naval officer by the typical path. I enlisted in the Navy right after graduating high school. So I just joined the Navy to kind of find ah a technical path, a path to training or college, and immediately started applying to whatever programs were available.
00:01:25
William
And within a few years, I found myself as a student at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. ah In that situation i felt kind of uh like a lot of especially previously enlisted guys when you find yourself in that situation you're you're liable to feel a little bit uh lost and and out of place and uh there's a lot of imposter syndrome going on so i kind of felt this compulsion to quickly learn the legacy learn the the the heroes and and you know there's the academy has its uh pretty uh exquisite pantheon of heroes
00:01:39
Donald Robertson
you
00:01:59
William
ah Within there, one of you know a local favorite is a guy named Vice Admiral James Stockdale, who he's a ah very well-celebrated figure within the Navy. He's very, very heroic and has ah has a very rich life, not not just his wartime heroism, but you know he went on to be a president of the Naval War College in his is a very philosophical thinker himself.
Influence of Epictetus and Stockdale
00:02:23
William
So kind of getting lost in his writings as a student, it was, ah you know, I was a mechanical engineering major and I was, now because i you know, kind of felt like that's what I was supposed to do.
00:02:35
William
But, ah but I really liked the philosophical stuff as kind of a break from the engineering.
00:02:35
Donald Robertson
Thank you.
00:02:41
William
And, uh, i Getting into his writings, yeah he ah kind of later in his life, he got pretty vocal about this obscure Greek philosopher named Epictetus.
00:02:53
William
And so once i i started pulling the string on on this Epictetus character, and then I just kind of fell into this this whole way of thinking that was very resonant with the way I i kind of already thought already. And then so from there, i got into the rest of the Stoics and and kind of kind of felt like I'd come home philosophically.
00:03:13
William
And then you know from there, i graduated from the academy and went on to and you know a submarine career.
00:03:19
Donald Robertson
And Nancy Sherman as well, I believe, was formerly a professor at the US Naval car Academy. Is that right?
00:03:28
William
That is correct, but we didn't overlap at all. I hadn't heard of her any of the time I was there.
00:03:31
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:03:33
William
she the her Her book, Stoic Warriors, I picked up far or later down the line that i I didn't realize that she had written it at the time.
00:03:42
Donald Robertson
And she's got some other, she's got another book of about stoicism that came out more recently as well. um Tell us a little bit more about Stockdale and and how he influenced or inspired you.
00:03:53
Donald Robertson
mean, I think actually of our listeners will have come, up although they haven't served in the US Navy, they'll have come across Stockdale independently
Stoicism in Military Context
00:04:00
Donald Robertson
um because he kind of went through a renaissance in popularity after stoicism started to become more and more of a thing.
00:04:06
Donald Robertson
How did reading Stockdale's works influence you? What did you take from that?
00:04:11
William
So stock Stockdale was kind of the kind of the the gateway and and led me to pull the string and discover those guys. But just a little bit about him. He his um he will was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in Vietnam for his leadership specifically as a prisoner of war in the torture camps and in North Vietnam.
00:04:40
William
And ah his his story isn't that well understood beyond that. I recently wrote an article on that, that, but, you know, people kind of think of him as, oh yeah, he's the POW guy, but it's not just, you know, he wasn't celebrated specifically for um being a POW and being a good one. He was the commander ah He was the scene the ranking officer of all of the American prisoners of war in that prison system and basically had to take charge as just a a formal responsibility of being the senior guy ah present.
00:05:18
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:05:20
William
He, you talk about the, I'm sorry.
00:05:20
Donald Robertson
Of hundreds of prisoners, I think. I think hundreds of prisoners, if I remember rightly.
00:05:26
William
That's correct. That's correct. Yeah. and And we're talking about over a seven year period. He was there for a very long time. And, you talk about the right guy at the right time. you i mean, it was just really his his historically unique ah to have this character in this situation at this time.
00:05:45
William
And it just happened to be that he was very deeply read in in philosophy before he got there, and particularly in the Stoics.
00:05:57
William
And he he the philosophy of Epictetus was just... crazily relevant to his situation in, in that prison camp, uh, where moral autonomy, uh, and, and being able to preserve your own sense of self and sense of moral self in a situation where you could be tortured to do or say anything, uh, was for many people, the difference between life and death.
00:06:26
William
Um, and so what he's, you know, he was kind of famous for, and it's part of his uh, his medal of honor citation is that he, at one point while he was there, he attempted suicide whenever things had reached a point where he, uh, had been caught, uh, communicating and knew that he would be tortured into compromising a resistance network and getting, and that would result in more torture and more death of, of his, uh, countrymen.
00:06:57
William
And so kind of out of options, uh,
00:06:58
Donald Robertson
you
00:07:00
William
He attempted suicide and the the guards found him before he died and resuscitated him to life. But that event precipitated a stop in the torture regime, the practice of torture in the in the prison system.
00:07:13
William
And so a lot of people credit that to the saving of of life. And that's kind of what's cited in the Medal of Honor citation. and And so that's kind of what a lot of people remember is like, oh yeah, he's the guy that attempted suicide and and stopped the the torture.
00:07:30
William
But it's far beyond that, that he's, for what you celebrated within the Navy is is he is the quintessential example of moral leadership and leadership by example.
00:07:41
William
His specific example basically presented the rest of the prisoners what one is supposed to be, what you know his example was what a uh how moral autonomy was to be retained whenever you were in that situation and that's how survival was was preserved and uh the the key to that was moral survival and moral identity uh being completely intertwined so very fascinating character and that's kind of what what led me into into stoicism from there
00:08:16
Donald Robertson
Occasionally you hear people who aren't into stoicism saying, well, this stoic stuff's all good and well, but does it does it really work when somebody's faced with extreme adversity or a really challenging situation?
00:08:30
Donald Robertson
And people like Stockdale provide a good example of somebody who is absolutely convinced that stoicism was the secret to his resilience in one of the most extreme situations that I think any of us could possibly imagine.
00:08:45
William
Absolutely. And, and, and, you know, you you get a lot of protest out there a lot of criticism of stoicism of, Oh, it's just, it's just cope. It's just, uh, people reasoning their way into dealing with their situation. Well,
00:09:00
William
but you know, my answer to that is like, well, well would you prefer that we not cope?
00:09:00
Donald Robertson
you
00:09:03
William
You know, what, what do you want? Of course it's, of course it's cope. Of course you, you have to cope with your situation, but it, it also works. You know, it doesn't work perfectly. Uh, you're, you're, you're not but going to become a superhero because you came across some good ideas, but it's going to move you closer to the ideal.
Stoicism's Role in Mental Health
00:09:23
William
You're altered every time you learn anything. You're altered as a person in some way. So the question is, when you learn something, or are you altered in a good way? Does it move you closer to the ideal that you want to be?
00:09:36
William
And in many ways, you can judge the the fruit of a philosophy or by or the you can you can judge a tree by its fruit. you know The proof's in the pudding. and And stoicism as a moral philosophy has some very good proof.
00:09:49
Donald Robertson
Yeah. um Unlike, but are probably to a greater extent, than rival schools of ancient philosophy. Stoicism can point to a number of famous historical figures, like Marcus Aurelius, for example, but there are many other figures in the Roman Empire, the Roman Republic, um that showed exceptional courage and were exemplary individuals as a result of their adherence to Stoicism, like Cato.
00:10:17
Donald Robertson
The Romans thought Cato the Younger was their iconic example, like of our a role model, and also a military figure.
00:10:24
William
Absolutely. And Cato was very admired by the founding fathers of the United States.
00:10:25
Donald Robertson
so
00:10:30
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:10:30
William
It was such that and George Washington had a ah play about Cato performed for his troops for inspiration.
00:10:35
Donald Robertson
Yeah. yeah Yeah. I think he loved that p play and like he even recited it in private and things and quoted it all the time.
00:10:47
Donald Robertson
So I guess that leads on to my next question, which is why why should the military care about stoicism? I mean, you've kind of almost, you've answered this with the example of Stockdale, but beyond James Stockdale, why should the military care about stoicism and what what could they potentially learn from it?
00:10:48
William
yeah
00:11:05
William
so i work right now at the pentagon this i'm i'm in between sue duties you know i hope to go back to a submarine here within the next year or two but at at the moment i work at the pentagon and outside the pentagon is pentagon city and it's
00:11:22
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:11:22
William
It's literally called Pentagon City and it is a bunch of skyscrapers that are there precisely because you've got a lot of merchants here to sell their wares and services to the cause of national security.
00:11:33
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:11:35
William
And and you know you you can you can grouse about profiteering and all that, but it' it's good that they're there, they're here and that they're They're they're available.
00:11:47
William
But if I were one of those, i was in one of those skyscrapers. I was one of those merchants and i and I came up to general and I said, Hey, general, I've got let me tell you about this. I've got a vaccine that we have developed or, or you know, a shot.
00:12:01
William
that you can just stick in the shoulder of, of a warfighter and boost that soldier's resistance to depression, fear, and despair.
00:12:13
William
And those things that cause us to hemorrhage warfighters to a mental health crisis right now, where we lose them every day to medical discharges.
00:12:13
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Mm-hmm.
00:12:22
William
General, I've, I've got a vaccine that, that would boost that resistance. Would you be interested in that? And of course they would, and you know, if that would, we would jump all over that. This is a huge problem.
00:12:34
William
The men, there is a mental health crisis that grips all of the advanced countries right now. And we do not have our arms around it as a military and and it is causing us all kinds of trouble.
00:12:43
Donald Robertson
Yes.
00:12:43
William
I've dealt with it my whole. Uh, my whole time, my whole career, I've lost sailors to, to the medical system because they, they, uh, they, they have whatever kind of problem that I think, uh, stoicism, I think that there it's clinically proven that the practices that the stoics just treated as, as natural ways of thinking are, uh, basically what, when you send them to the medical system, what they get taught to do.
00:13:01
Donald Robertson
Yes.
00:13:05
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:13:10
Donald Robertson
Yes.
00:13:10
William
And then if that general said, well, yeah, absolutely.
00:13:14
William
I'd say, okay, well, what about. and Since you're interested in that, what about over here? I've got this other vaccine that boosts qualities of calm and self-control affecting everything from the performance in combat to self-discipline in the chow line, potentially dealing with your fitness problem.
00:13:19
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:13:27
Donald Robertson
yes
00:13:34
William
That's a different problem that the military is trying to overcome right now. What if I had a vaccine for that? Would that be interesting to you? And of course it would. And then if I said, okay, well, since you're interested in those two things, maybe you'd like my ethicality booster that would lessen risks of ethical failures, anything from lying and cheating and providing false reports to commissions of wartime atrocity or liberty incidents, what have you.
00:13:50
Donald Robertson
Right. Right.
00:14:02
William
What if I had ah you know a shot that didn't just do all those things, but it did them together such that they reinforced one another and that those various principles strengthened one another. Is that something that you would want to be able to and ah provide to your war fighters?
00:14:20
William
That is why I think the military should take notice to us.
00:14:23
Donald Robertson
And it could also be a leadership shot as well.
00:14:28
William
I didn't even get into that.
00:14:29
Donald Robertson
We don't even get into leadership. like There's probably other things out here. We could brainstorm. There's probably few other things.
00:14:34
William
It goes on forever.
00:14:35
Donald Robertson
ah
00:14:35
William
I mean,
00:14:36
Donald Robertson
There's a can of worms here somewhere. um Because as you were talking, I was thinking, the military already have resilience training. Right?
00:14:45
William
hu
00:14:46
Donald Robertson
um But it's not popular with everybody. Like... There's the Masters, i think there's different versions of it in different branches the armed forces, is that right? There's a thing called the Masters Resilience Training Program, for example, that was developed by...
00:15:00
William
There are these versions, these things, they they they evolve and they, you know, every, the the Navy has something called warrior toughness, which is a title i i i I would not have chosen.
00:15:08
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:15:11
William
I would just call it Navy performance psychology if it were up to me. But, ah you know, we've got various performance psychology programs and resilience training and and these things and we we try them out and we see what works and and and they work a little bit.
00:15:24
William
And I, I'm not even, I'm not an advocate for the, the military ah formally doing anything with stoicism. And, you know, I say this in in the book, I argue, i think the right actions ah For the military to take as light of a touch as possible, but notice it, take note of it, recognize it and create the space.
00:15:42
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:45
William
ah If war fighters want to have, ah you know, informal meetings or groups or study or whatever, make the literature available. It's gotta, it's gotta be a bottom up thing.
00:15:56
William
um But it's a good, it's a good positive benign trend is basically what I'm saying.
00:15:56
Donald Robertson
Yeah. yeah
00:16:01
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:16:02
William
If the military tried to formally, you know, any military I've been in, if we tried to formally impose this on anybody, we would screw it up.
00:16:09
Donald Robertson
Uh-huh.
00:16:10
William
We would, we, oh man, they would reject it so fast.
00:16:10
Donald Robertson
We try to force stoicism down their throats. People feel might resist it.
00:16:16
William
Yeah.
00:16:16
Donald Robertson
Yeah. But, you know, the other thing I'd say about it. Okay, see, let's see what you think of this one, right? So as a therapist, I think therapists are ah ah kind of in a sense of kind of got their heads up their backsides a little bit because therapists tend to talk to other therapists and they talk to people who are in therapy a lot.
00:16:34
William
okay
00:16:35
Donald Robertson
they're They're kind of in a bubble, right? And therapists tend to think that everybody has got a huge collection of self-help books at home and they're all into therapy stuff.
00:16:46
Donald Robertson
And they forget, although if you kind prompt them that they'll remember the statistical research, that only a fraction of people with mental health problems ever find a way into a therapist consulting room.
00:17:01
Donald Robertson
Now, in the military, my experience has been that there's a bunch of men and women that serve in the military that aren't super keen to go and speak to a counsellor or a therapist or a psychiatrist. um But sometimes and and it's sometimes it's simply the case that ah some individuals think that it's a sign weakness if you go and see our a shrink or get into any of that kind of self-help malarkey.
00:17:31
Donald Robertson
um means there's something wrong with you. And so some people are quite reluctant to go down that path. So I've met over the years quite a lot of people who told me that their only exposure to CBT, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, and stuff like that, and by the way, most of the resilience programmes tend to draw on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, but people, particularly in the military, have told me that their only exposure to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy was through reading books about stoicism,
00:18:00
Donald Robertson
because it was almost like a Trojan horse. There are guys and women that wouldn't go anywhere. They wouldn't touch therapy with barge pole. But they're kind of interest interested in Marcus Aurelius and military history and stuff like that.
00:18:14
Donald Robertson
And then they got reading the books and somewhere inside that Trojan's loss, like a military history and Roman history and stuff like that, in the belly of it, there was cognitive behavioral therapy and self-help stuff that they actually found beneficial.
00:18:26
Donald Robertson
So my contention is that we could reach a whole demographic of people. that are kind of lost to therapy and self-help otherwise by presenting it to them ah alongside stoic philosophy.
00:18:41
William
I think of it, I, I, I agree with that wholeheartedly. I think of it as a preventive, you know, and, and, and your, your book, uh, which I, I used a lot in the writing of my book, your book, uh, the philosophy of CBT, you mentioned in there, it's important to remember that therapists are not simply doing stoicism.
00:19:02
William
It is different. It is not exactly the same thing.
00:19:03
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Yeah.
00:19:05
William
Uh, you know, uh, therapy is is clinically proven it's rigorous it is systematic it has sciences behind it as opposed to philosophy which I, the way I think about it is you, you, you don't prescribe stoicism to somebody who is in need of therapy.
00:19:28
William
Uh, that would be irresponsible. If I've got someone who needs therapy and I, I hand them Marcus Aurelius, that that's, that, that could, that could be fatal.
00:19:33
Donald Robertson
Yes.
00:19:37
William
You know, that the the person needs to see ah a therapist if they need to see a therapist, but as a preventive, uh, as a subroutine,
00:19:37
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:19:41
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:19:44
Donald Robertson
Yes.
00:19:45
William
to to to just have ah as a healthy mode of thinking. I mean, that's what it is. It's a healthy mode of thinking.
00:19:52
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:19:52
William
And and i think of it, the difference between ah stoicism and and what the stoic practices specifically and cognitive behavioral therapy, i think of it like we understood winemaking long before we understood microbiology.
00:20:01
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm.
00:20:08
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:20:10
William
And before we, you know you know, humans discovered that chewing on the bark of a willow tree can cure a headache long before we figured out that the active ingredient of salicylic acid could be synthesized into aspirin.
00:20:17
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:20:25
William
It's something that Stoics just figured out naturally because it makes sense. And that's why we're still reading about them 2000 years later.
00:20:33
Donald Robertson
The other thing I noticed about stoicism is that research on resilience training shows that it works pretty well, apart from one thing, um which is that it tends to its effects tend to fade over time.
00:20:48
Donald Robertson
So the standard resilience training programs that are kind of based on CBT work for a couple of years, and then people seem to need booster sessions.
00:20:58
William
That's an interesting observation because they don't have the they don't have a reason to keep doing it and it just fades and they stop doing the practices.
00:20:58
Donald Robertson
Now, that's kind of...
00:21:02
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:21:04
William
Yeah, okay.
00:21:05
Donald Robertson
that's That's kind of annoying.
00:21:05
William
That makes sense.
00:21:06
Donald Robertson
It's a bit of like going to Pilates or something. It's like great for a while then they get kind of bored with it after a while and lose interest, unless there's something to maintain it.
00:21:08
William
Yeah.
00:21:13
Donald Robertson
Now, I think that could be part the value of stoicism, because people who get into stoicism, for the most part, in my experience, in fact, almost always stay and into stoicism. It's sticky, as psychologists sometimes put it.
00:21:29
Donald Robertson
The holy grail. of prevention would be if you could teach people something that's permanent, or at least very long lasting, that you don't have to keep reminding them about.
00:21:41
Donald Robertson
And stoicism combined with CBT. So stoicism could be, as you say, preventative, but it could also be complementary to existing resilience training programs or CBT and stuff like that.
00:21:51
Donald Robertson
So stoicism combined with CBT-based resilience, I think, might solve this problem potentially, if we're lucky, of giving people a framework for resilience that could be longer lasting and more permanent because they actually identify with it as a philosophy of life or an ethic.
00:22:09
Donald Robertson
It's not just a bunch of techniques. It's ah a whole way of approaching life.
00:22:14
William
Yeah, i think that I think that the missing element in just the techniques is the moral obligation to follow them, which is if if you you know if if Stoicism as a philosophy resonates with you, then that moral obligation weighs upon
00:22:22
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Stoicism and Military Values
00:22:34
William
you.
00:22:34
William
it and it The Stoics believed that it is not just useful, not not just utilitarian, but morally correct to be rational. Rational, you know, being irrational is, is wrong. It's vice, it's vicious. And so you have that moral obligation to continue. If you agree with that, if you, if you agree with them, that being rational is morally right, not just useful, then you have a moral compunction to keep doing it.
00:23:04
William
And, and, and you naturally do. I mean, I know it's, I know it's been sticky with me. It's definitely just, it's not something I really, have to think much about, Oh, what would Epictetus say I should do here? It's just, it's just kind of a natural, uh, subroutine and and the way to think through a situation.
00:23:22
Donald Robertson
I guess the next question I wanted to ask you, and we're kind of leading into this again, is, you know, whether there's something, you know, when I first got into stoicism, to begin with, I was talking to classicists and philosophers, and then actually very early on psychologists and therapists.
00:23:37
Donald Robertson
And then over time, as we developed the modern stoicism organization, we were doing the conferences and stuff, I noticed that there were a few other kind of subgroups or demographic groups of people that kind of had a stake in stoicism, were interested in it.
00:23:51
Donald Robertson
So there were some, a bunch of people involved in different sports, for example, as players or coaches that were interested in stoicism coming at it from a little bit of a different angle.
00:24:02
Donald Robertson
But there was also the military and other branches of uniformed services, I could say, like firemen and police officers and stuff like that as well, maybe kind of related to that.
00:24:12
Donald Robertson
So the military keep coming up again and again. I wonder, is there something, do you think, about Stoicism that particularly appeals to people that serve in the military? And what do you mean when you say that Stoicism is a warrior philosophy?
00:24:27
William
So, you know, I'll start off by acknowledging that that that is a provocative term and it's a provocative title for the book.
00:24:35
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm.
00:24:35
William
And, you know, i've I've been here for the whole gamut of blog debates about whether the stoicism is really compatible with the military.
00:24:49
William
ah and you've got your handful of people who argue that it's not because obviously it's not because military is bad and military is evil and the Stoics are good and they're moral.
00:24:59
Donald Robertson
uh,
00:25:01
William
And so morality would compel you to not be in the military. and And so in that that line of argumentation is kind of kind of what led to the book because the book goes into just war theory, which is, you know, if if you if you live in the real world, you you realize that Wars happen and sometimes you've got to fight them.
00:25:22
William
Um, and, uh, then there's, there's all kinds of, all kinds of problems and messiness and, you know, human factors that weigh in there and every war that has ever happened in history is going to have your, your profiteers and your grifters and your ulterior motives and your,
00:25:31
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:25:38
William
ah you know, terrible passions and and all those things, but, but they, they still happen and you've still got to have warriors in your society. So what I found is the people who make that argument are really letting their, their politics spill over into their philosophy.
00:25:53
William
And, and I think that they're, like they're putting the cart before the horse there and, and, and their, their issue isn't really with warfighters using stoicism. It's, it's their issue is just with warfighters. um But,
00:26:07
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm.
00:26:09
William
Moving on from that point, um I think that so we talk a lot about that we use the word philosophy a lot in the military in terms of my philosophy is my command philosophy. The the terms command philosophy are very, very, ah very frequently used in leadership.
00:26:29
William
the I think that when it it philosophy is used in that way, it's it's kind of a a cheapening of the term or a misuse of that word because philosophy is not just, I think we should communicate well and you know i I think that the leaders should eat last.
00:26:38
Donald Robertson
Right.
00:26:46
William
That's that's my philosophy. Like, okay, that that's a that's a principle. That's that's not a philosophy. And thinking more about that, you're hearing a lot about the warrior ethos today, but it's not well-defined and there's a lot of, ah miscommunication and ah and misinformation on what the warrior ethos means and a lot of confusion on what it means.
00:27:07
William
um I argue that a warrior ethos and a warrior code and a warrior creed are all different ah useful things, but they all kind of fall out on on a spectrum of thinking. And I think a warrior philosophy falls out at the end of it. So an ethos is like a naturally emerging spirit.
00:27:27
William
I can eat that the values and beliefs that define the group and that they can that could include things like courage and selflessness. A code, ah a good example of a ah code a warrior code is the the code of conduct of U.S. Armed Forces, which says that I will never surrender of my own free will.
00:27:48
William
that's ah That's an article of the code of conduct. A creed is ah is a statement that is a a a formal, a repeatable oath that I say to establish my membership or of belief or faith in my group that outlines the fundamental tenets of ah that my group holds.
00:28:07
William
you know This is my rifle.
00:28:07
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm.
00:28:09
William
There are many like it, but this one is mine. That's the Rifleman's Creed. Or in the the Sailor's Creed the United States Navy says... I will support and defend the constitution of the United States of America.
00:28:20
William
A philosophy i argue goes on this belongs in the same spectrum kind of at the end of all those things. It's a broader mode of thinking that involves incorporating fundamental ideas about psychology, ethics, and the nature of reality.
00:28:34
William
And, I argue that a philosophy gets at the wise. It uses reason, the fundamental human faculty of reason to get at the wise behind all those things that ethos and code and creed doesn't get to.
00:28:50
William
Philosophy should say something about why one should be selfless, why one should never surrender, why one should support and defend the constitution. That's the difference between a philosophy and those other things.
00:29:04
Donald Robertson
And do you think therefore there's something, is there some kind of
00:29:13
Donald Robertson
some' some reason why stoicism would particularly fit with the military or or appeal to military personnel.
00:29:21
William
Yeah, that's the question you actually asked, isn't it? Yeah.
00:29:24
Donald Robertson
ah was the first That was the first part of the question.
00:29:27
William
I think...
00:29:28
Donald Robertson
I think the rest of what you said is relevant to that. So, yeah.
00:29:30
William
yeah Yeah, I think, I mean, I think it kind of is obvious. All those things that ah it promises to not necessarily to grant you, it's not ah it's not magic, it's not this magical cloak that you can wear that makes you selfless and makes you fearless and all those things, but it moves you closer to those ideals, or at least it certainly
00:29:45
Donald Robertson
Right, yeah. Mm-hmm.
Stoicism and Warfare Philosophy
00:29:52
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:29:52
William
aspires to.
00:29:53
William
And so what I think what makes it a warrior philosophy more than something else is that it It values or strives to ah achieve the things that are valuable to a warrior, specifically to the moral role of a warrior, the specific qualities in a human that are necessary to perform that role well.
00:30:18
Donald Robertson
I think people have seen parallels and between the idea of a warrior code or code of honor. as As you said, a philosophy is something bigger than just a creed or a code, um but they've seen some kind of compatibility, maybe that's the word, ah between, for example, codes of chivalry in the Middle Ages and so and the cardinal virtues of Stoicism.
00:30:42
Donald Robertson
You know, which are close. If you articulate kind of virtues in a particular way, it's kind of close to being a code of honor or something like that.
00:30:50
William
Yeah, the philosophy to be compatible with that with that code, would be it chivalry or or anything else, it should explain the why.
00:30:51
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:30:59
William
it's It's looking under the hood of how this machine works.
00:31:02
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:31:02
William
you know the the The machine is the is the chivalry. How it actually works are all the internal arguments that fit together coherently to to provide the philosophy.
00:31:13
Donald Robertson
if you're lucky. Why do we believe this stuff is like what the the question that the philosophy is trying to answer. So you touched on another closely lead related question, which I know you wanted to cover, which is how on earth, people might say, how ah on earth can warfare have anything to do with virtue?
00:31:33
William
I think my reply to that would be, how can it not? And ah that that can be controversial, but ah basically being a moral person um or being cosmopolitans as the Stoics were, does is not the same thing as pacifism.
00:31:54
William
um And in fact, pacifism has got a lot ah lot of things going against it.
00:31:55
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:32:02
William
it It ends up getting into its own moral problems. And I don't think you will find that many ah people who will argue in argue that stoics would necessarily be pacifists i'm not saying that that would be a that would be a straw man uh but if we're not going to be pacifists then we need to be able to say what are the conditions under which i would go to war uh and it'd be the right thing to do and that's how you
00:32:27
Donald Robertson
Historical context helps us out a little bit here, I think. We should we might we should maybe say, and before we go further into the contemporary question, that because you mentioned there are people out there that might say, how could Stoics ever go to war and be in favour of this kind of stuff at at all?
00:32:44
Donald Robertson
And the first thing you might say in response to that is just point at some famous play historical Stoics and say, well, first of all, obviously, Marcus Aurelius commanded like 130,000 troops, you know, was engaged in war after war.
00:32:55
William
Yeah.
00:32:58
Donald Robertson
um In fact, all ancient Athenians were soldiers and had military training because they didn't have a professional standing army. They had a citizen army and they could all or adult Athenian citizens to be called up to serve in the military at any point.
00:33:14
Donald Robertson
And most Romans i had some military training. So in the ancient world, it would have been perceived as are much more integrated with daily life.
00:33:27
Donald Robertson
um and So many of the and famous figures from history um were who we associate with Stoicism were served in the military.
00:33:36
William
Yeah. Now think thinking through that is kind of part of what led me to write the book because you can, you can point to them, but you, you do owe an answer of like, were they just hypocrites?
00:33:46
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Yeah.
00:33:47
William
You know, was, was Marcus Aurelius perhaps, was he just hypocritic critic hypocritical or was he just weak and unable to stop the machine the machine of empire and just led around by his advisors?
00:33:48
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:33:58
William
And, you know, even though he, uh, ostensibly believed in this philosophy, but would really rather, um not fight these wars. I, I think he really would rather not fight the wars.
00:34:10
William
Like most people would rather not fight the wars, but it comes down to, is it, is it right? And, you know, Marcus Aurelius's empire was falling apart.
00:34:16
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:34:19
William
And from, ah his perspective, he had, he had rebels, uh, you know, rebel clans that were, uh, ah fraying his empire and looting and pillaging and doing all the things that rebel clans do.
00:34:32
William
and And, you know, the the resulting wars were were horrible. And I mean, they're etched in stone in the column of Mark Marcus Aurelius. And it, it, it's extremely violent and it's, ah it's a ugly monument whenever you really look at what the pictures are, are of, but it's an excellent Testament of war is a very ugly thing.
00:34:46
Donald Robertson
There you
00:34:50
William
And yet here we are. I think that, you know, that this gets beyond the the the the topic, but ah I mean, the the the most peaceful ah regime is a perfect deterrence regime where, you know, nobody fights because the the consequences are are so bad or so dangerous.
00:35:12
William
um And that, you know, if you look at the lethality of wars, you see that it drops dramatically as soon as the nuclear weapon is invented.
00:35:24
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm.
00:35:24
William
And the really good book on this, and this isn't necessarily his argument, but it's it's all there in the data, is Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature.
00:35:24
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm.
00:35:36
William
He talks about the... the you know kind of inevitable progress towards being a more peaceful world and a more peaceful species over time and it and it's bumpy you know it's it's not ah a straight line and you know when there's always room to screw it up and go backwards but we have gotten more peaceful as a species and that is good And yet we continue to require warriors, you know, and ah what would be great is if we could just prepare for war and be prepared for war all the time and not have to actually do it because we're so well prepared for it and our adversaries are so well prepared for it that our security dilemmas do not drive us into open conflict.
00:36:15
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:36:23
William
That would be ideal, I think. Um, that, you know, the cosmopolitan ideal is a world without borders and, and wars and the forces that, that, protect the borders and everything, but you got to figure out how to get there. And the only real way to get there is, is hegemonic globalism, uh, where, you know, one power has conquered the rest of the world. Well, that's not good. We don't want that.
00:36:45
William
So what's the next best way to have a peaceful world? It's to have political stability in the world. Uh, because you're, you, you have got us, uh,
00:36:51
Donald Robertson
Thank you.
00:36:56
William
you've got a stable world and you've got stable relationships and and you know what to expect. And I'm sorry, but you know, war, warfare is a part of that and readiness for warfare is a part of that. And, and that's, that's just what you have to deal with whenever you're a decision maker.
00:37:13
Donald Robertson
That makes me think about a question that might lead us too far afield, but i'm kind of it makes me wonder what the future of warfare is and whether submarines and drone warfare might feature prominently in the future of warfare.
00:37:24
Donald Robertson
What your thoughts are perhaps about that?
00:37:25
William
Mm.
00:37:25
Donald Robertson
But I don't know how that relates to stoicism.
00:37:26
William
man, that is my, that is my whole life. That is, you know, yeah that that's every day. ah That's, that's, that's what I'm looking at. And yes, when you get into, it is fascinating. We could, we could write a library on ah the questions of ethicality of drone warfare.
00:37:46
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm.
00:37:46
William
And especially when you, you start bringing in ah artificial intelligence and you realize the quickness of decisions that,
00:37:54
William
and all the forces that are driving us to faster and faster decisions and where you place restraint on your fast decisions whereas your adversaries won't you know especially when they have completely different ethical uh systems and frameworks than you do it it's it's a very complex uh moral landscape
00:38:18
Donald Robertson
So having said a lot about the military, although we can, surecu as you said, we could say a lot more, some of our listeners, most of whom aren't in the military, although some are, are going to be thinking, is your book, Stoicism as a Warrior of Philosophy, given the title, is it more of an academic work? Is it mainly aimed at military personnel?
00:38:42
Donald Robertson
Or is it intended for a wider audience?
00:38:46
William
So it is an academic work that is written for a general audience or a general audience of the military. Let, you know, philosophical lay people, but smart people.
00:38:58
William
ah which the military by and large is. um So I concede in the introduction that i I don't have any formal training as a philosopher.
00:39:05
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:39:09
William
I'm not particularly self-conscious about that because I have formal training and one or two other things that are equally relevant to the book's topic. But I am trying to put forward a philosophical argument and to be able to do that well and establish the credibility, I use a lot of footnotes and I do a lot of cit citations.
00:39:28
William
you've You've seen it. you know You've seen the book. It's probably been a while since you looked at it.
00:39:30
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:39:32
William
ah But I mean, there are 500 plus citations in the thing.
00:39:37
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:39:38
William
Uh, and so that, that is kind of intimidating to some of the people who, uh, are looking for a general, general read. And I kind of advise people like this is, this is not a, my first stoicism book, you know, and the people who are looking for a, you know, military guy writes book about how to use stoicism to be a badass. Like that, that's not this book, man.
00:39:59
William
You know, you're going to,
00:39:59
Donald Robertson
That could be next book. Your next book, right there.
00:40:03
William
So someone's going to write that, you know, im just waiting for that to come out. And, and, and, you know, part of that, the, the title is provocative and everyone who views the military incorporating stoicism into its practices is one of the evils of, you know, alongside broicism and, and, and all the commercialization of, of stoicism and all that stuff.
00:40:08
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I think
00:40:12
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:40:25
William
It, it If you see the military as this force of bad, then you see that title and you just shudder. And you think, what what is what is this idiotic book that's coming out? And I think you very quickly come to the conclusion of like, oh no, this I did my homework.
Military Metaphors and Stoic Ideas
00:40:44
William
You know, uh, it is, is very deeply researched, very deeply cited. Um, and that there's a reason for that. I had to bring receipts to, to make my arguments.
00:40:55
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:40:56
William
Um, and, and I, and I make them, uh, and I, you know, I'm, I'm standing by to be challenged.
00:40:59
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:41:01
Donald Robertson
Yeah. I guess there's another thing that I would say. Well, first of all, like you know I think it's perfectly consistent with the history of stoicism to understand it within a military context. like and And it goes all the way back to Socrates, who in his trial, one of the first things he brings up is his military service.
00:41:20
Donald Robertson
And I think that actually set a precedent. The fact that he he talks about that and uses it as a kind of, in some ways, as a metaphor for describing aspects of philosophy.
00:41:31
Donald Robertson
One the things that intrigues me is the ancient philosophers have a kind of variety of stocks metaphors that they appeal to. ah use athletic metaphors. They use metaphors about financial transactions.
00:41:45
Donald Robertson
They use metaphors about nature. have this repertoire ah that they use to articulate their ideas in a number of ways.
00:41:51
William
and I think more of them are military metaphors than any of the other ones.
00:41:54
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:41:55
William
If, if, yeah.
00:41:55
Donald Robertson
There are many military metaphors. Yeah, absolutely.
00:41:57
William
Yeah.
00:41:58
Donald Robertson
Somebody one day could just go through and collect them all together and say, here's all the many ways that they use little anecdotes or and metaphors about the military to articulate different aspects of what stoicism means and the teachings of everything.
00:42:14
William
I captured a bunch of them.
00:42:15
Donald Robertson
Yeah. i
00:42:17
William
Yeah.
00:42:17
Donald Robertson
So that's another interesting way of approaching the connection between the the two things, I think. And maybe it makes it more accessible to people that serve in the military as well. um I think maybe we should give some examples. I'll give you one example that i remember off the top of my head from Marcus Aurelius.
00:42:33
Donald Robertson
ah He's talking about ah Roman legionaries ah storming, besieging a city and storming the battlements. and And he said, you know, who was there's nothing to be ashamed of if somebody's injured and they require the help of a fellow soldier in mounting the battlements.
00:42:52
Donald Robertson
um And he's saying you shouldn't be afraid to ask for help. You know, the main thing is that you're pursuing a virtuous goal, you know, and you're doing your duty. And if you have to ask for someone's support in doing that, that's actually admirable.
00:43:05
Donald Robertson
you know So he uses this metaphor from his life as a military commander to make a more general point about psychology and philosophy. i I don't know, could you could you think of any from your book about how i ideas from the ancient military were maybe used to illustrate more general points?
00:43:22
William
You bet. ah Probably one of my favorite ones and, you know, kind of the most relevant to our discussion ah is Epictetus and Seneca both make, I think it's fascinating, they both make exactly the same point citing the same historical event.
00:43:38
William
And to our knowledge, they never met.
00:43:39
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:43:41
William
But ah the Spartan stand at Thermopylae, the Battle of Thermopylae, which is very, very well known, very well celebrated, 300 and all those things. And, uh, and it's very, it's been romanticized for a hot minute.
00:43:59
William
You know, it's not something that we just started getting excited about recently.
00:44:00
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:44:03
William
I mean, you see it, uh, going all the way back to, uh, to those times, but that, that battle happened well before Zeno was born.
00:44:09
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:44:12
William
So the the Spartans were not stoics, at least not at that time.
00:44:12
Donald Robertson
the
00:44:16
William
There was no stoicism in Sparta at that time, stoicism proper. But Epictetus points to that battle as in way the Spartans performed so bravely and compares it to Athens ah surrendering twice and basically allowing their their city to be pillaged, which kind of was the end of the the the Hellenistic philosophical scene.
00:44:43
William
And he he, he points to that and basically says, is that what your philosophy, he's talking about rival philosophies or philosophies that, that he disagrees with.
00:44:46
Donald Robertson
Uh-huh.
00:44:52
William
And he, and he says like that, that is effectively what your philosophy would produce is equivocation and hand-wringing and uh you know just moral uncertainty and not really knowing what the right thing to do is or talking yourself out of doing the right thing whereas his philosophy he argues would produce something more like the spartans and ah it's very much of a you can judge a tree by its fruit argument
00:45:25
William
And then Seneca made the exact same argument before before Epictetus did. So I thought that that was fascinating. I'm wondering if if Epictetus was reading reading Seneca's letters. I doubt it. I don't think that that would make sense ah historically, but it's possible, I guess.
00:45:44
Donald Robertson
I don't think he was a fan of Seneca I think they they moved in the same circles funnily enough But they they were probably, what think is very likely, is they were probably both reading the same books and drawing drawing on similar sources.
00:45:56
William
Yeah. You're right. That's probably what what happened there. It's probably something Panacious argued at some point.
00:46:05
Donald Robertson
You're raising the, let's not dwell on Sparta too much, but just to mention in passing, the Stoics and so Socrates during his lifetime was kind of, ridiculed for um being associated with the Spartans.
00:46:20
Donald Robertson
It was very controversial because the Athenians were at war with the Spartans um and Socrates was mocked for his circle of friends being kind of Spartan sympathisers. And the Stoics seem to kind of have this guarded admiration for for Sparta.
00:46:37
Donald Robertson
ah But one of Zeno's students went to Sparta and became an advisor to the Spartan king. So Stoicism pretty early on in its history was exported to Sparta.
00:46:50
Donald Robertson
We don't really know much about how it progressed there or if it took root. um But, you the Spartans were of also, ah the Stoics were interested in the Spartans and Spartans, it seems, were also quite interested in Stoicism. but
00:47:04
William
Was that Cleo Meany's?
00:47:06
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:47:07
William
Yeah, okay. Yeah, I have read about him. Okay, cool, yeah.
00:47:10
Donald Robertson
Yeah. So what do you think are some of the ways in which your book advances the conversation about Stoicism? but ge you bro What are you bringing to the table?
00:47:17
William
Yeah.
00:47:18
Donald Robertson
What you what are you telling us about Stoicism that we didn't already know?
00:47:21
William
So i you know, I think that there's, uh, there's some ways that I present things that, you know, are, are just, I haven't found someone present them in this way before that I think will be useful to general readers and and useful to the, to the Stoicism, the modern Stoicism discourse, just to kind of articulate certain things.
00:47:34
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
00:47:40
William
And it's not what I set out to do is just kind of it kind of fell out this way whenever I'm trying to make the argument. So I, you know, the, the, the first thing, which is basically the topic of the book is examining just war theory, ah through a stoic lens. And I'm not the first one to do that. Uh, Leonidas, uh, Constantacos, uh, wrote his, uh, doctoral thesis on that. And I used, uh, uh, I think it's Constantacos is how it's pronounced, but I used a lot of his research and, uh, and, and some of my writing was very helpful.
00:48:10
William
Um, but it, you know, my book basically, uh, exp goes into, a lot of detail on, on the just war theory.
00:48:21
William
But in order to do that, uh, there's this several things I had to do first. One of them was to establish a, a stoic theory of, uh, of patriotism that, uh, and, and,
00:48:33
William
it kind of goes hand in hand with a collective moral agency and it leans heavily on Hierakles and, and his,
Novel Philosophical Arguments in Spears' Book
00:48:41
William
uh, his writings and what we have of, of Hierakles' writings and the theory of oceosis to explain, uh, why i think Stoics would be properly patriotic to a point, uh, to a, to a rational, well-reasoned and moral point.
00:48:41
Donald Robertson
uh
00:48:57
William
Um, I, it also establishes a stoic theory of moral duty. you'll find some academics will argue that stoics didn't really conceive of duty, which I think is ridiculous.
00:49:10
William
Uh, they, they very clearly did. It's just not, uh, it's not Kantian, uh, deontological duty in the, in the same way that we might think if, if,
00:49:13
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:21
William
you're reading a bunch of Kant, then you might say that they, oh, they didn't know what duty was. Well, of course they did, you know, as moral obligation, but it, you know, they viewed it as, um,
00:49:32
William
inextricable from from nature uh their their sense of moral obligation was was completely intertwined with what naturally follows from what one is one's purpose or telos as a human being or as a specific role uh role ethics are are heavily uh heavily utilized in the book now i didn't i didn't
00:49:35
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:49:45
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Yeah.
00:49:55
William
um invent anything new with with with role ethics, but I definitely lean on it to articulate stoic moral duty. And then the third thing in order to, on our order to do do that, uh, the concept and the way that Epictetus uses the concept of pro-hiresis is, is kind of hard to understand, but it dawned on me that it works a lot like a philosophical razor, like Occam's razor or Hanlon's razor.
00:50:22
Donald Robertson
Right.
00:50:26
William
You know, uh, these are, these are basically thumb rules that use to shave off extraneous arguments or extraneous information that isn't relevant to what what you are trying to achieve or trying to think about.
00:50:38
William
And prohoresis is used the same way ah by Epictetus to shave off things that are not not moral factors, which non-moral factors are not just indifference, but they're, they're not me.
00:50:51
Donald Robertson
right
00:50:56
William
And, uh, they're, they're not what I am.
00:50:59
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:50:59
William
And so they're the stoic knife, I argue is a way of reducing the, the self con, uh, concept to the moral essentials.
00:51:02
Donald Robertson
Right.
00:51:07
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:51:10
Donald Robertson
Right.
00:51:10
William
And so, In addition to making a really cool logo for the cover, it's ah it's a metaphor um that I think is useful for articulating a ah ah tough concept.
00:51:17
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:51:21
William
I think all these things are kind of relevant to the conversation and useful outside of the ah construct of ah of ah of a military.
00:51:21
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:51:29
Donald Robertson
Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think you're right. The stoic concept of selfhood is and involves carefully distinguishing between our moral agency and the externals, basically, reputation of wealth and stuff like That's not who we are.
00:51:44
William
yeah
00:51:47
Donald Robertson
But we tend to think that's who we are. We tend to identify with our property and our reputation or our persona. Well, of course we do. like So Epictetus is saying something quite radical psychologically as well as ethically.
00:51:55
William
Yeah.
00:52:01
Donald Robertson
He says, that's not who you are, but you know you should remind yourself of who you really are.
00:52:03
William
Yeah.
00:52:06
William
And he scoffs at that and this, you know, ties it back to Stockdale. You know, he says, you you can, and you can try to imprison me.
00:52:10
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:52:13
William
Go ahead. You can imprison my body. You can chain my leg. You can't imprison me. You can't. My mye sense of of choice, my sense of moral choice or proresis, my sense of self is well beyond your your reach or anyone's reach.
00:52:30
William
Go ahead and imprison my body.
00:52:33
Donald Robertson
Yeah, that's ah interesting. the This idea about the role, felt like Epictetus talks about roles. I think it goes back to some of the earlier middle Stoics.
00:52:46
Donald Robertson
But there's also like a little fragment that attributes some a similar idea to Aristov Chios, who was the first renegade Stoic. He split from Zeno, but was still thought of as a Stoic.
00:53:01
Donald Robertson
um We're told that he introduced an emphasis on roles to Stoic ethics. and That was probably reintegrated by by later Stoic teachers.
00:53:12
Donald Robertson
But I think it's quite an intuitive. In modern psychotherapy, we have this thing... um called values work, basically, values clarification, activity scheduling.
00:53:28
Donald Robertson
And it's pretty integral to treatment for depression in particular, but we use it in other areas. And it's really about identifying character traits that you value, like virtues.
00:53:39
Donald Robertson
basically It's basically virtue ethics rehashed why in behavioral psychology. But a big part of that is also identifying different roles that people but fulfill in life and what it would mean to excel.
00:53:52
Donald Robertson
you know What does it mean? We ask clients, for example, what are the the main roles that you have in life? you're You're a parent, you're an employee, you're a student. you know And but does it actually what qualities would you need to actually perform those roles well
00:54:08
William
Yeah, I'm sorry. we Were you asking what qualities you need to perform the, were you asking me something or?
00:54:14
Donald Robertson
Well, i was I was just commenting on the fact that this idea goes back to very early on in stoicism, ah but maybe not Zeno himself, but it's also become prominent in the idea idea of role ethics, for example.
00:54:20
William
Yeah.
00:54:29
Donald Robertson
is Something similar has become prominent in modern psychotherapy and evidence-based psychotherapy. And I guess it's relevant to you because your role you have a yeah a role in the military.
00:54:35
William
That's interesting.
00:54:40
William
Yeah, the the and and the the moral role of a warrior features very very importantly in in the book and how how that's it's kind of a distinct moral moral role ah from from anything else.
00:54:45
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:54:52
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:54:54
William
i I define it as the the ultimate moral practitioner. you know if If you're going to divide the world into theorists and practitioners, ah the the the the warrior's world is very, very messy.
00:55:06
William
It is very, uh, it is the real world decision maker who has to, you know, has very serious consequences for, uh, for their, for their decisions.
00:55:17
William
The, ah the role concepts, something that's very important to the way that the Stoics define the roles is that there, there's a tier and you've got all of the specific roles you might play, whether that's soldier or Senator, father or brother, uh, whatever.
00:55:28
Donald Robertson
Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:35
William
ah Those roles, whether they're chosen or there they're inherited by your circumstances. But then above all of those, you've got the fundamental role of a reasoning human being.
00:55:47
William
And
00:55:47
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:55:48
William
ah That role is is defined by reason, which means virtue to the Stoics. It means being a a moral person and thinking morally.
00:56:00
Donald Robertson
Yes.
00:56:01
William
And a very important principle that Epictetus emphasizes, and and and I agree, hammer throughout the book is that the stoics belief that that moral role ah the fundamental role of a reasoning human can never be trumped by any specific role there's a very very clear uh hierarchy that epictetus establishes and in my uh last chapter i basically argue that the fundamental role of reasoning human
00:56:22
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:56:32
William
and a the the specific role of a warrior map onto the difference between natural law as articulated by ah Cicero primarily, but reflecting the thoughts of the middle Stoics, Panatius and Posidonius, that natural law
00:56:41
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:56:53
William
maps onto the fundamental role of human, whereas the written human law that governs the behaviors and conduct of a warrior, specifically the requirement that I obey all lawful orders, maps onto the specific role of warrior.
00:57:05
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:57:09
Donald Robertson
It's interesting you should say that because as you're talking, I'm reminded of the passage in Marcus Aurelius where he says that he's both a Roman citizen and the citizen of the Cosmopolis.
00:57:22
Donald Robertson
I think this kind of parallels it. He has a role as a Roman citizen, an emperor role.
00:57:24
William
absolutely it does
00:57:28
Donald Robertson
But, you know, and this might surprise by many of his peers that he also thinks of himself as having a higher duty that even transcends his role as emperor in terms of natural law.
00:57:40
William
yeah so and and i i argue that it is a misreading. It is, it is very natural to read into that a, uh, a similar hierarchy between, ah the local community and the, the cosmopolis or cosmopolitanism proper.
00:58:03
William
And one of the things I, I really dig into in chapter five, is that really what they meant or really how they should be reading our, uh,
00:58:03
Donald Robertson
Yeah.
00:58:11
William
or understood. And I argue that that's not argue that the, um, he's, when we were talking about the fundamental role, we're talking, talking about virtue proper, which includes the, uh, need to balance and harmonize duties to the local community and duty duties to the cosmopolis, uh, not necessarily to completely prioritize one or another.
00:58:32
Donald Robertson
yeah
00:58:37
William
And I cite some more, uh, more recent looking into the concepts of extreme cosmopolitanism and the idea that, you know, if, if I treat all humans completely the same, if I view someone on the other side of the world, exactly the same way that I view my own son, that's probably going to make me a pretty crappy father.
00:58:56
Donald Robertson
Right. Yeah.
00:58:59
William
I've got different moral obligations attendant to that person, to to one person than I do to another. ah that are tied to the respective roles that have to play. Uh, but that does not mean that that person on the other side of the world is less human to me or, or, or not important to me. It's just that I have to balance my, my responsibilities, uh, between those two and, and my responsibilities to them each are different.
00:59:29
William
So it's a, that's a, that's a deep rabbit hole that we can, we can go into and you know, it's a, I go, I go deeply into it in chapter five.
Target Audience for Spears' Book
00:59:37
Donald Robertson
So I get the impression your book isn't just for military personnel, but it would appeal to some civilians as well who are maybe interested in the whys of stoicism and go you know and going into it in a little bit more detail. The same way that Nancy Sherman's books were kind of written from a military perspective, but they reached a wider audience as well.
00:59:59
William
Yeah, I do think so. i mean, it's really 90% of the book is is just talking about stoicism and there there are anecdotes and there there there are few passages that are specifically relevant to the military.
01:00:07
Donald Robertson
Mm-hmm.
01:00:13
William
And then, you know, the the last chapter is just war theory, but that that is relevant. That's an interesting thing to know and to talk about. But if I did not make the book specifically for the military, then no one would have published it because because I'm not a philosopher.
01:00:29
William
ah You know, so I've got to have a reason to have ah for for you to ah to to believe what I'm saying and for my specific perspective to be relevant to this this argument that I'm making.
01:00:43
Donald Robertson
We need to have another. We had a military story. We can't. Like, gosh, how long ago was that? Like, I think it was probably like about five or six years ago or something like that. And it was really successful. yeah We had a huge number, about 30 or 40 speakers, I think, in the end.
01:00:58
Donald Robertson
Loads, everybody wanted to speak at it. So I think we need to have another military stoic on. People keep saying that, you know, I think it would be interesting to get people from different branches of the armed forces in different countries, you know, just to talk about their perspectives and stoicism, you know.
01:01:12
Donald Robertson
So I think you'd be a good candidate to come and speak it if you're interested in
01:01:14
William
um'm I'm all over it. Let's go.
01:01:15
Donald Robertson
All about that. Okay. Well, I think it's been another fantastic discussion. So thanks very much for joining me, William. ah We hope that you listeners enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. So please share the link with your friends and subscribe to the Stoicism Philosophy is a Way of Life newsletter on Substack for more podcasts and articles on philosophy and psychology.
01:01:36
Donald Robertson
Thanks for listening. And it's goodbye from me, Donald Robertson, and from my guest, William C. Spears.
01:01:42
William
all right. Thanks a lot, Donald.
01:01:44
Donald Robertson
Cheers. Bye, everyone.