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Marcus Hedahl on Stoic Happiness (Episode 44)
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Want to become more Stoic? Join us and other Stoics this October: Stoicism Applied by Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay on Maven
What is happiness?
In this discussion, Caleb speaks with Marcus Hedahl, a philosophy professor at the US naval academy.
They discuss happiness, its subjective versus objective nature, the meaning of life, what we can and can't reframe, and much more.
It's an excellent conversation for understanding Stoicism, beginning with its account of happiness.
(09:59) The Nature of Happiness
(13:57) Is Happiness Something One Can Search For?
(22:43) The Happiest Person Marcus Knows
(26:36) The Stoic View of Harm
(29:11) Stoics Do Not Judge
(43:08) Is A Longer Life Better?
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Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Stoicism in Daily Life
00:00:00
Speaker
Oftentimes I find that it's the little things right after the big things that are most likely to set us off in part because we think we should be able to control the little things, right? Maybe I don't get that job I want or that promotion or that award, but then the plate breaks or I can't get the cheese melter to work, right? I get incredibly frustrated because I think I should be able to, to at least do that.
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome to Stowe Conversations. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism. Each week we'll share two conversations, one between the two of us, and another we'll be an in-depth conversation with and experts.
00:00:43
Speaker
And in this conversation I speak with Professor Marcus Hidal. Marcus is a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. This is his third appearance on Stoic Conversations.
Subjective vs Objective Happiness
00:00:56
Speaker
We talk about happiness, its subjective versus objective nature, the meaning of life, what we can and can't reframe, Stoic harm, judging others, and the Stoic view of death.
00:01:10
Speaker
It's an excellent conversation for understanding stoicism, beginning with its account of happiness. What is it to be happy? And as a quick heads up, apologies about the audio quality on this one. We cleaned it up as we could, but there may still be some issues with overloading. I hope you're able to find value in it nonetheless.
00:01:36
Speaker
Here is our conversation. Welcome to STOA. My name is Caleb Ontiveros, and today I am speaking with Marcus Hidal. Marcus is a professor of philosophy at the US Naval Academy. Before then, he briefly worked at NASA Langley, and this is his third chat on STOA conversations. So thanks for coming back. Thanks for having me, Caleb. I always love coming to the STOA. It's great.
00:02:02
Speaker
So you've done a number of different courses on happiness. What do you find as the most compelling account of happiness?
Redefining Happiness
00:02:12
Speaker
Ooh, okay. I find the most compelling accounts of happiness to be ones that are more robust than the way that I think most people in American society would typically define happiness. And that is a feel good feeling. I was in a seminar at New York university one summer and on happiness and talking about ancient conceptions of happiness.
00:02:34
Speaker
And the professor told a story, and as all good teachers do, I've stolen this story. I bet he stole it from somebody else, right? But he tells the story about how he has a cross-country flight, and he had forgotten to pack a book. And so he goes to the bookstore at Newark Airport, and he goes to the very, very small kind of religion philosophy section, and he sees my life as told to Tom Stevens or something.
00:03:00
Speaker
And he buys it thinking it's philosophy and unbeknownst to him, it's really Vanna White's autobiography. And Vanna White tells this story of how when she was in high school, she tried out for the cheerleading team. And one of the older girls told her cruelly that she had made the team before the pep rally where they're going to announce this. And then at the pep rally, they announced she didn't make the team.
00:03:24
Speaker
And Professor White, as she was called in the story, says, I thought I was happy, but I was wrong. And so there's something really powerful about that notion. I thought I was happy, but I was wrong. That I think we can all relate to. But it points us to something
00:03:43
Speaker
that demonstrate that happiness, or at least a conception of happiness that we're going to be satisfied with, is probably going to have to be something that contains elements beyond the subjective elements that we can kind of discover right away. It's not just like I'm in a good mood, or things are feeling pleasant.
00:04:07
Speaker
You would never say, I thought I was having pleasant feelings, but I was wrong. You might say something like, I thought I was feeling pleasant feelings, but I was missing something lurking beneath the surface. And so if we think that happiness is something we can be wrong about, that we can discover something about beyond just our first personal reaction. So I would say that's what calls me conceptions of happiness.
00:04:32
Speaker
Unsurprisingly, I'm really drawn to Greek conceptions of happiness and kind of ancient conceptions of happiness. The term or which is going to be I think translated in English differently depending upon which Greek philosophers we're talking about are the ones that unsurprisingly I'm most drawn to being drawn so much to the Stoics.
00:04:52
Speaker
So I suppose that's a condition on happiness then. It's something you can be mistaken about. There's a substantive account of happiness then, that it's not something like pure feeling, but something deeper. What do you think are some of the compelling ways then you found either the Greeks, the ancient Greeks, or others have sketched out what this deeper aspect to happiness is?
Aristotle vs Stoic Happiness
00:05:21
Speaker
Yeah, so, so, as I was saying before, I think, so if we look at the Greek conception of eudaimonia, which frequently gets translated as happiness, I think
00:05:32
Speaker
People are perhaps most familiar with that with Aristotle. And what Aristotle has in mind is a pretty robust conception of what counts as happiness. A lot of people prefer to translate it as something like a flourishing, fulfilling life, right? Because Aristotle has all kinds of criteria for happiness, right? It has to involve our rational natures, right? It has to be something that is lifelong. It has to be something that's objective in some way. It has to be something that's tied to excellence, that our excellences lead us to happiness.
00:06:00
Speaker
And so that's one conception of happiness that we get from the Greeks. We also get the Stoic notion. So when we're talking about Eudaiminian Stoicism, it's the same term, in large part because the Stoics were also Greek. I don't know if this is fair or not, or if it's cheating because my brain naturally works more in English than in Greek.
00:06:23
Speaker
that I will typically look to translate eudaimonia for the Stoics to be a kind of joy, a kind of joyful acceptance of the world as it is. And so unsurprisingly, it's more momentary, but it's also more transcendent. But it too is not something that's merely subjective the way we might think of joy. Even if we look at the subjective elements though,
00:06:50
Speaker
And I think one of the things that's really interesting about happiness is that you have all this more recent psychological literature on that. And they just kind of take as a given that happiness must be a subjective element. But even then, we find this notion that it's a subjective element that we can be mistaken about, right? And that might be tied to something other than just
00:07:14
Speaker
a good feeling. And so it has to do with a lot of other things. So I don't know if that starts to answer your question or not. Well, I suppose in psychology, often in psychological research, someone might divide up a sense of momentary happiness, feeling good in the moment, as opposed to a sense of satisfaction, which involves a general evaluation of one's life, including memories. And it's not merely, well, not merely momentary.
00:07:43
Speaker
Exactly. And it also might be as well because, you know, in the modern world, a lot of these experiments can do things over time, right? So they can kind of have you report on your feelings immediately. And then you can see how things that you think will impact your subjective feeling and reaction to the world will, in fact, do that or not. And so that can be really fascinating in that when I started off with like, you can be wrong about it, right?
00:08:11
Speaker
Fascinatingly, I think that points to something that happiness ought to be analyzed as something more than just a subjective reaction. But even if it was just a subjective reaction, notice I could be wrong about what's going to make me happy, right? I could think certain purchases are going to make me happy and they won't have that impact on my subjective well-being. One of my favorite examples of this is that regardless of what they think will make them happier, people
00:08:36
Speaker
respond that spending money on experiences, especially with other people, increase their happiness more than spending their money on things, particularly things like clothing or cars that we buy as much to impress others as for ourselves, right? Interestingly, like mattresses are an odd little exception, because even though they're a physical thing, no one buys a mattress to impress like their friends, you don't show off your mattress.
00:09:01
Speaker
It's much more for improving your own life. But even in that case, even if we just think it's a subjective reaction, we could be wrong about what makes us happy.
Pursuing Happiness vs Meaning
00:09:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. That's a funny thought. Check out my Tesla and then come on, come inside and check out this new mattress. Yeah. I mean, you might brag about it once or twice, but yeah, you're not going to be, not many people get to see your mattress or learn about it.
00:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, so this notion of satisfaction that's still in some sense subjective. You're evaluating how well your life has gone. You're including memories. It nonetheless allows for a sort of thicker, if you will, more substantive ideas that the Greeks had to come into play. Since you might, as your values change, you might change how you evaluate your life over time.
00:09:52
Speaker
So it seems like we're moving in a more ancient stoic direction once we make this distinction. Yeah, I think actually, absolutely, right? And so as we start, there are many ways that you can convince someone that something more robust, that what they're after is something more robust. Sometimes I think a lot of people will just fight you on the term.
00:10:16
Speaker
They'll just say, well, happiness is this kind of necessarily subjective thing and you can't be wrong about it. And I care less about that, both as an educator and as a philosopher and as one thinking about life and more about, well, okay, well then what are we after then?
00:10:33
Speaker
If that's all happiness is, then we might be after something more like joy or flourishing, fulfilling life, or we might be after something more like a meaningful life, or we might be after something more like a significant life, something that is still going to be influenced by our subjective response to the world. If we think that
00:10:56
Speaker
the world is inherently lost. It might be hard to be both happy in a subjective sense and to lead that kind of life. Seneca has this great line in one of his letters where he says, some flee so far into their dens they think everything outside is turmoil.
00:11:11
Speaker
And that one has really resonated with me, that line as many of the lines of the Stokes have over the last few years. And that also we often think that the path to progress and that kind of life of fulfillment that we're looking for will be easier than it is. So one of the things you often see in a lot of the self-help that I find less useful
00:11:34
Speaker
is this idea that it will always be an easy path and that self-help will always help you feel better immediately, right? Tying to that notion that what we're after is happiness and happiness is this kind of warm, fuzzy feeling. A quote I frequently remind myself of at the beginning of the semester, and I'm at the beginning of the semester now, is Epictetus's quote Rufus, which I'm sure you've heard many times where he compares philosophical instruction or like self-reflection even as going to the doctor's office.
00:12:01
Speaker
And he says, you know, one should not leave that process, please, but paint, right? If we don't come in healthy, right? If we got a broken shoulder or an abscess or a headache, right? We don't want people to just sit us down and tell us clever slogans and witty sayings, right? In order to garner praise. Because then you're still leaving with that headache, with that absence, with that broken shoulder.
00:12:24
Speaker
And so he implores philosophical teachers to say like, is this why people leave their homes and the comfort, right? So they can be given little slogans and witnesses by you. No, it's gonna be a painful process, right? At times. But you have to see that the world isn't all lost. And you have to recognize that that thing that you're after won't always make you feel warm and fuzzy.
00:12:50
Speaker
Right? It will be, it might involve pleasure in some way, but it won't be synonymous with pleasure. Yeah. I suppose when we're talking about happiness, as you say, you can always play word games. You have happiness as defined this way or that way, but what we are concerned with, and I imagine most people listening are concerned with, is this notion of not so much defining words, but what is the purpose of a human life? What is? So what does a good life look like?
00:13:18
Speaker
Yeah. What are you after? Right. I had one of my students ask me today, when can someone start to call themselves a philosopher? And, and, and I thought I found that to be a fascinating question. Right. I mean, my answer that they're like, most people don't say that, but I was like, if you're, if you're living deliberately, right. If you're really seeking out this kind of notion of, of what, what kind of life do you want to live? What do you want to pursue in a deliberate way?
00:13:45
Speaker
then I'm good with that. I know many of my colleagues wouldn't be, but I'm perfectly content with that. As long as you think about what is it that you're after, what kind of life are you after? Do you think happiness is something one can directly search for? Or do you think there's a common theme among many philosophers, religions, which is happiness is, in a way, not something one should look for?
00:14:14
Speaker
Yeah, right. We can't aim at it directly. It has to come. Certainly that's what Kant thought. I don't know if I have a good answer to that question. I typically think that it is not something we can aim for directly. That it is the product of something else.
00:14:34
Speaker
the struggle for significance and to live deliberately. If it's pleasure, at least sometimes perhaps we can aim at it directly. I know some things
Finding Meaning in Suffering
00:14:45
Speaker
oftentimes. At the end of the day, I often know what will please me for a while and take the edge of the day off, right?
00:14:54
Speaker
But even there, the Stoics worry about the hedonistic treadmill that a lot of people worry about that these things will continue to change. I often say that if you look at a lot of their examples of luxuries, kind of pickled things, purple clothing and shoes, that demonstrates the, over time, the ridiculous hedonistic treadmill. If I'm like, oh man, you live such a luxurious life with your shoes and your purple clothing.
00:15:23
Speaker
and your pickles. If you're talking about something more robust, I think that's a fascinating question. I think there too, it probably is something that might be difficult to do certainly all at once, right? If you think of happiness as something more like transcendence, then perhaps sometimes we can aim at it.
00:15:50
Speaker
And perhaps sometimes we have to aim at it. But even there, I'm skeptical that you can do it all the time. So maybe my best answer would be you have to have it in mind in some way. Aristotle famously says we have to have a target at which to aim. But at the same point, if you're directing your energies towards that target, you might be flawed in some way. But I don't have a satisfactory answer to that question. I should and I don't.
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah, some amount of reflection is necessary to define what the target is. There's a philosopher named Mark Johnston who has a line that I think about in a slightly different context. It's in his book entitled, Saving God, which is a defense of pantheism or panentheism to be specific.
00:16:45
Speaker
It's very similar to the stoic idea of God. God is nature or as an aspect of nature. He has this line that something to the effect of, the demand for a meaningful life is ultimately idolatrous, and something one leans on as a distraction to avoid completely abandoning yourself to nature.
00:17:09
Speaker
I think that's a powerful thought that purely focusing on meaning, significance, distracts from what directly provides the meaning or significance.
00:17:19
Speaker
I suppose right I mean that almost sounds even Buddhist to me right this idea that I need to even get out of my own way right and not even care and even meaning I suppose we could think of that in kind of two two different ways right that that kind of quote makes me think about more than I think I have in the past so oftentimes when we think about like the meaning I think
00:17:42
Speaker
I think a lot of people, when they come to philosophers and ask, what is the meaning of life? They think of this kind of grand thing. And maybe if you say that you're structuring your life so it has meaning, you might think that what you're doing is giving this grand narrative or living all in service of this grand narrative such that at your funeral,
00:18:03
Speaker
Right. People will say, wow, he was a man of, you know, a man for this organization or a man for his city or a man for his country. Right. I've been to, you know, I teach at the Naval Academy. Obviously we have funerals, not uncommon. Our department chair's funeral is this week. And it's easy to think about that kind of grand narrative. And I think that you're right. If what you're doing is always living for that kind of meaning.
00:18:32
Speaker
And everything you're doing is, in a sense, in service of that kind of meaning. You might worry about that, and that is its own kind of self-focus that might be problematic. But there's a smaller M kind of meaning, a smaller M kind of meaning where it's the significance or the way you frame the event. And this certainly isn't something that the Stoics were as focused on. Meaning is, in many ways, a kind of more modern concern.
00:18:59
Speaker
But Viktor Frankl, who is many ways, has a lot of stoic leanings, right? Has this notion that what we can do is always kind of craft our own meaning and much the ways we can kind of choose our own reactions to the world, right? He says everything can be taken from the man, but one last thing, the last of human freedoms, the ability to choose one attitude in a given set of circumstances, choose one's way, right? And so that seems like a very stoic notion.
00:19:25
Speaker
What seems maybe less stoic, but still in this notion of small m meaning, he tells the story in Man's Search for Meaning, which is an amazing book, of a man whose wife has died, and he's suffering, and he's beyond consolation, and Frankl was a psychiatrist, and so he's talking to the man. And he asked the man, what would happen if your wife died first? Would she be suffering?
00:19:47
Speaker
And the man says, oh, yeah, actually, it would be way worse for her because I still have my emeritus appointment at the university. And it just happens that most of our friends that are still alive at this point in our lives, they were very old, are my friends rather than her friends. And what Frankel says is, well, you can view this. You can frame this suffering that you're going through, this grief you have for her, as something that you're sparing her from.
00:20:17
Speaker
The chances that you would die at the same time are almost zero, right? Life is not like the end of the notebook.
00:20:23
Speaker
And so one of you would have to go through this. And notice what Frankel is doing in a very kind of like modern Stoic kind of small e existential way is telling the person, even if you can't change anything about your external circumstances, you can change the way you adapt to that. And in a more modern way that the Stoics wouldn't say, you can change the meaning of that. So not meaning in the big way that I think that I really like the quote that you had, Caleb,
00:20:49
Speaker
not in kind of this big grand meaning, like it would be weird at your funeral to say like, he grieved so his wife wouldn't have to. I mean, in many ways, you couldn't do that, right? It's not like they got to choose who died first, but he can reinterpret the way he frames this suffering, right? And that does remind me a little bit of some of the stoics, right? In the anterity on Epictetus talks about how everything has two handles.
00:21:14
Speaker
right, one of which can be carried and the other which you can't, right, so if your brother acts unjustly towards you, you can either focus on the injustice or the fact that he's your brother, and that too is kind of a, the Stoics probably wouldn't use the term meaning, right, it's more about a framing or a focus or
00:21:33
Speaker
An acceptance, perhaps, would be probably more stoic language. But we can think of it, I think, a little bit as meaning, right? Yes, but that's an interesting point that we can think about meaning in kind of a small M sense and a big M sense. What's the meaning of this class or teaching this week versus like, is that teaching all just part of this grand narrative that I hope someone will say one day that he was a gentleman and a scholar and a teacher, right? Yeah, anyway. Yeah.
00:22:04
Speaker
Yeah, the Stoics were excellent at reframing. And noted that reframing is advantageous both psychologically and in terms of helping us make better decisions. So there's a Bictetus, he has a number of different examples, whether it's picture yourself at the Olympic Games, they've already started. Or I think Marcus Aurelius has a bit that's similar to Viktor Frankl, where he says that
00:22:29
Speaker
One reason we can be thankful of the trials that are happening to us now is that they're not happening to someone else and we have the ability to withstand them unlike others because of our philosophical fortitude. Yeah. Who is one of the happiest people you know?
00:22:48
Speaker
I think my friend Steve McClelland is one of the happiest people I know. He is always, I think he embodies a kind of Taoist response to the world. I was just with him in Scotland recently and he said something along the lines of people are always happy with their choices, right? And I was just like,
00:23:07
Speaker
Well, that just demonstrates why you are a judge, right? I don't think that's true. I think oftentimes people replay choices again and again, but he has an effortless ability to move through the world. When I think about the Daoist conception of the uncarbed block, right?
00:23:28
Speaker
I often think of him. He's a Boston Red Sox fan who met his wife the night that Aaron Boone hit the walk-off home run in 2003 to eliminate the Sox from the World Series.
00:23:50
Speaker
If both of those things can be true, then you have the ability to move on from great tragedy. I mean, it's easy to forget that, you know, now that the Sox have won several times, you know, the way people were still thinking and about the Red Sox. And if you can still be in a good enough mood to laugh with someone and have them want to see you again for a date on that night, then yeah, that's pretty impressive. What is the Taoist conception of the Uncarved Block?
00:24:21
Speaker
So the basic idea there is that another way of translation for is like unworked wood, right? And so the notion is that sometimes human beings treat things
00:24:38
Speaker
as they want them to be. So we might take a piece of wood and change it for our purposes as opposed to what it might naturally be best for. So there's a story, and I'm not going to remember the names, but of someone complaining about a particular tree and how the wood is all naughty and how it's not good for anything. We can't build a house with it, right?
00:25:00
Speaker
And the response is, you only think that it's no good because you have a very set purpose for it. And this piece of wood won't work for that particular purpose.
00:25:12
Speaker
but there are all kinds of things it can do for you, right? It can provide you shade, you can sit up against it after a long day. And if you can recognize it for what it is and what it can do and not force it to be something else, then your life will go better, right? Or you'll see the world more appropriately or you'll see all the affordances of the world better.
00:25:42
Speaker
or perhaps some combination of all of those things. And so, yeah, so there's a notion to that, unsurprisingly, much more Eastern in its philosophical traditions and kind of what it's saying about our world. But yeah, I think there are some connections there, although I think it's important to respect the differences in between that tradition and the Buddhist tradition and obviously the Stoic tradition as well, but they all have certainly a lot of things in common.
00:26:10
Speaker
Yes, that of course brings to mind the stoic idea of the dichotomy of control. This focus on what is your own, what is up to you. If you properly internalize this principle, then you could make judgments that the teacher does in this case, which is that the tree is not your own. And hence it's not something that you are fundamentally responsible for.
00:26:36
Speaker
Yeah, right, or don't try to make it something that it's not, right? And yeah, we get frustrated about those kinds of things a lot. Oftentimes, I find that it's the little things, right, after the big things that are most likely to set us off, in part because we think we should be able to control the little things, right? Like, okay, maybe I don't get that job I want, or that promotion, or that award, but then, you know, when the plate breaks, or I can't get the cheese melter to work,
00:27:05
Speaker
I get incredibly frustrated because I think I should be able to at least do that. I think a lot of times people can accept that stoic, that fundamental stoic inside, at least some of the time. I was teaching stoic harms today.
00:27:20
Speaker
And I think it's useful to give it with a simple example and then a more extreme example to demonstrate that what the Stokes really mean and how deep it goes. And also to recognize that people will often buy into it the first time, right? So when someone cuts you off in traffic, they don't harm. It's not the cutting off that harms you. It's the belief that you shouldn't be cut off or that they've wronged you in some way or disrespected you or these kinds of things, right? And I think the students all nod their heads to that, right? That yeah, it's not, they haven't actually done anything wrong to me, right? And I should be able to,
00:27:49
Speaker
to move on and then when you say, well, let me slap you across the face, it's the same thing, right? It's not the blow that harms you, right? But rather your belief about it or your expectation, right? Marcus says again and again, right?
00:28:04
Speaker
that you shouldn't expect to live in a world in which people aren't unjust and ingracious and sometimes act inappropriately, right? You can't expect that, right? You can't expect to live in that world. And so really, it's your, and when you lay it bare, you're completely on releasable belief that that won't happen. But it is extreme, right, in all cases, right, to think that that's what it is that harms you. But I think that's what makes it so powerful is the fact that it's not just,
00:28:34
Speaker
you know, the kind of like easy self-help version, right? Okay, yeah, in these cases, I should be able to move on and not let it bother me. But really, like, it's hard as I was getting back to with the Rufus quote, right? It's hard to realize how often I let things bother me that probably I should.
00:28:55
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Of course, in these situations, people are doing something wrong. If they slap you or cut you off, they're not fulfilling their role. They're not acting virtuously. But that doesn't mean that you now need to make the judgment that you have been harmed. Yeah, yeah. And that's, I think, one of the things getting specifically to stoicism, and this does tie to happiness, too. You know, I think that a lot of times when people look at the stoic
00:29:23
Speaker
When people think about stoicism, they forget that real thick prohibition might be too strong a word, but certainly that belief that you should refrain from judging others, that that's really an essential part of
00:29:43
Speaker
the philosophy and you see it again and again in Epictetus and Marcus, right? You know, do you see someone taking a bath quickly? Don't judge they do it badly. Do you judge they do it quickly, right? And Marcus says, you know, to require all of humanity to never injure anyone would be absurd. It would literally be absurd. And so one of the key points is that we should refrain from judging other people. I think getting back to the quote that you raised that I liked a lot,
00:30:12
Speaker
Right, that's the part that sets me off from humanity as much as anything. And I think it's one of the things that can be really hard to miss when you first start getting into stoicism, right? Because it does, a lot of times people find it does work for them and it provides them some sort of solace. And they look at someone else and they see shadows of themselves, right? And they judge and say, oh, well, if only if you were a little bit more willing to let that go.
00:30:41
Speaker
Right. Life would go better for you. And I think it actually comes from a place of wanting someone else to have the same tools that work for you, but it can quickly turn into a judgment. I actually had a student last semester that talked about, you know, how he had done this with his girlfriend, you know, been upset with her when she wasn't able to let things just kind of roll off her back.
00:31:03
Speaker
And he thought he was living up to the Stoic ideal based on his very first interactions with Stoicism a lot of times through places that don't dive as deep. And then when he actually started reading Marcus and Seneca and Epictetus, and he was like, whoa, they're telling me that this too is bad, right? That this judgment I have of her is as much part of the problem as anything.
00:31:29
Speaker
And it was a real eye-opening experience for him to kind of recognize that this element of not judging others is so central to the philosophy. And I think, I will say at least in some of the communities you might worry about, embracing a caricature of stoicism is unsurprisingly one of the things that's let out of the story, right? That we should, we should be really cautious about that. And Epictetus says particularly, right, particularly when we're starting out, right? And frankly, I think
00:31:58
Speaker
in America in the year 2023, I think we're all just starting out compared to a lot of these people. Practice Stoicism with Stoa. Stoa combines
Stoa App Promotion
00:32:10
Speaker
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00:32:25
Speaker
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Applying Stoicism Personally
00:32:53
Speaker
I have a piece currently titled Stoicism for me, but not for thee on this. Oh, that's great! And it takes on this frame that Epictetus explicitly counseled us to sympathize with people and not take the Stoic line.
00:33:13
Speaker
Yeah, not not. Yeah, the stoic line is meant for yourself, not for others. And when you use it on others, sometimes it can be very helpful. But there are all these pitfalls, you may be encouraging yourself to make a false judgment. You may be using the stoic line as an advantage to oneself as a way to excuse your own behavior.
00:33:37
Speaker
Yeah, and the other thing, and I hadn't thought about this before, but I think there's a really powerful reason for that. And that is even in the later Stoicism where perhaps you might say they move away from the sagely ideal a little bit more than in the early Stoics. So the Romans certainly focus more on the progressor than on the sage. I think it stops becoming Stoicism if there isn't
00:34:06
Speaker
If there isn't, even if it's asymptotic, if there isn't some regular of ideal that we can, that we should all be aiming for at all times. And so one of the problems with judging, especially if you're starting off new and you're looking at all of humanity.
00:34:23
Speaker
you're gonna give yourself too much of a pass, right? Because you're no longer judging yourself against the regulative ideal. You're no longer judging yourself against perfection that you're supposed to be aiming for at all times. Even if many modern stokes and I count myself against them, don't think that that's actually possible, right?
00:34:42
Speaker
that the sage isn't possible. But it is still something that we can asymptotically approach always, regardless of how good we are. We can always be getting better until we're actually a sage. And so another kind of reason that we should be really cautious about judging others is it completely changes our frame. And we're much more likely to be like, oh,
00:35:04
Speaker
Yeah, but I'm looking at how much better I am at this than so many others. And then I might think that that's good enough when it's no longer stoic if we're not always aiming.
00:35:19
Speaker
to improve until we've eliminated all beliefs about that externals can harm us, all until we're perfectly virtuous in all counterfactual situations. Not just that we always do the right thing, but we would always do the right thing in all situations. And until we reach that disposition, until we reach that belief state, then we're drowning. We're still vicious.
00:35:48
Speaker
And I think that's another reason why I think the refraining from judging others is so important in stoicism. Because it just changes our frame of reference. It takes it away from the sage and to other people. And obviously, I'm going to be judged radically different in those things, in those frameworks.
00:36:07
Speaker
That's a great point. What that brings to mind for me is that there's a stoic view that there are no such thing as degrees of doing wrong. Either you're acting as a sage would or you're simply doing something wrong and it doesn't matter whether you're stealing one dollar for someone or stealing a hundred million dollars from someone.
00:36:29
Speaker
And they had philosophical reasons for thinking this. But there's also, related to this discussion, this idea that as soon as you're making judgments about these actions, as soon as you're thinking about degrees of wrong or harm, there's always a risk that you start thinking, I'm better off on that score.
00:36:51
Speaker
when the focus should always be on the sage or some other regulative ideal, not comparing yourself to others. Yeah, I mean, I do get a lot of pushback from people about why I have that if it's impossible, right? But I think it just demonstrates, you know, Patrick Lee Miller talks a lot about like, that that's what life is. And in many senses, we're always have to be striving towards something, right?
00:37:17
Speaker
And let's assume that Aristotle is right. And we just want to lead this flourishing, fulfilling life and have a plaque after us and a monument in the yard. And that's why great men and women, if they believe that, and that was it at their retirements, especially in a society so defined by our careers, would mourn. What else is there? If I've already
00:37:48
Speaker
live the life that the statue is worthy of, right? Now I just have to not mess it up, I suppose, right? Not do something that would tarnish my name forever afterwards, because I messed up so badly. But that doesn't seem, I mean, maybe this is naive of me, because I'm still a fair ways away from that, like retirement stage, but that doesn't seem, as someone who's now starting to think about it, actually, like in the back of my mind, that doesn't seem tempting to me, I would,
00:38:18
Speaker
It's much more appealing to me this notion that the fight continues, that like the creation of ourselves is something that is ongoing, right? We're always working towards something in a new context, in a new field, in a new something, right? Of getting better. It would sadden me if that ended at some point before my life ended. Now that might just be different.
00:38:46
Speaker
Some people might be ready for all of that to be over at some point, but yeah, that appeals to me much less, I suppose.
00:38:57
Speaker
Yeah, you have these two different ideas of how happiness, the shape of happiness takes on in life, which is on one side you have this always evolving idea, you're just approaching some ideal, or you have this other ancient Greek thought that happiness is just something that you evaluate over a whole life. Maybe it's not, there's no set point, but it shouldn't really be thought of as an evolution. It's just a feature of a whole life.
00:39:23
Speaker
And on this picture, one can't truly say that someone is happy or not until they've passed away. Yeah, I mean, certainly Aristotle says that, right? We can't call a person happy until they're dead. But I don't know, I mean, so it's an interesting question about in that framework, like in Aristotle's conception of happiness, if, if like,
00:39:45
Speaker
You know, if the work someone does in the last years of their life after they've already kind of done all this meaningful and significant and contributory work and kind of live the life such that they've contributed, if that matters in the same way.
00:40:09
Speaker
I mean, maybe I'm naive. I think that I have lots of contributions and things to say that I haven't said yet. But even if I felt like I had written my opus or finished the paper that is the most significant one, I would want to think that there was something more than just not messing it up after that.
00:40:37
Speaker
And it's less clear to me on Aristotle's picture that let's say, I often think of military examples, right? So think about an admiral or a general after retirement that has led a career such that not just, you know, in service of their nation, but one that, you know, we're gonna name, we're gonna have a statue after or name a building after so long as there's no scandal that comes up in the last 10 years of their life, right?
00:41:05
Speaker
even if they can't contribute anything to the public discourse at the same magnitude of what they've done already. I think there's something noble about the progress and the struggle and the quest for improvement and to excel in different areas that I think is better captured under the stoic framework of, no, I'm always aiming towards this ideal. I'm always aiming to change my beliefs. I'm always aiming to change
00:41:35
Speaker
to change my behavior to better align with virtue. Yeah, that's right. The Aristotelian ideal doesn't suggest that what can go wrong in a life usually has to do with the happenings of chance or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Right. Yeah. Something really random could happen. Yeah.
00:41:57
Speaker
Yes, one of the key examples of this in ancient literature in Herodotus and Plutarch is Solon. He's talking to a famous, wealthy, powerful tyrant, Croesus, and Croesus as Solon, the philosopher statesman.
00:42:16
Speaker
who the happiest person is. And Solon names these nobodies, these people who lived well and died well. And of course, Croesus thinks this is nonsense. Get out of here. And then, of course, Croesus loses his kingdom. And as he's being put to death, famously shouts, you know, damn Solon, this wise man, he was right.
00:42:43
Speaker
Well, we've been talking about different kinds of happiness and meaning. We have this ultimate happiness or meaning purpose, if you will, this sense of overarching good. And then there's also happiness on the day-to-day sense at the level of events where you can reframe particular events. This would be an example of the kind of happiness or meaning, which you called meaning with a small m.
00:43:08
Speaker
Yeah, for the small m. So I think there's one thing, there's one analogy that I think I've added in talking about stoicism. I think since the last time we talked that I think really, I find is helpful in this notion of happiness and meaning. And so I had a student once when we were talking about the way that the Stoics say that we ought to focus on death, right, and focus on the
00:43:34
Speaker
how our time is limited, right? You get so many amazing quotes there, Seneca's on the shortness of life talking about how we've lived as if we've destined to live forever, right? And one of my students asked me if Stoics think that life is a burden, right? Because we're always focusing on death and saying that we're going to die. And I think that it made me realize that there's this, there was this underlying assumption
00:44:01
Speaker
that I hadn't realized before, that if something is good, that more of it is always better, right? And maybe it's, maybe this is overly egocentric, but I view that as an American, maybe it's just a Western, maybe it's a modern view of the world, right? That if something is good, more is better. That if McDonald's french fries are good, then the ridiculous super-sized McDonald's french fries are even better. And what are the things that I,
00:44:28
Speaker
it made a lot of sense in my life that I often talk to my students about is the notion of ski boots. And so I asked my students about how they feel when they put ski boots on in the morning. And if anyone's ever gone skiing, right, especially downhill skiing, like you are so excited to put on, especially if you haven't been skiing a while. First time out in the season, I used to live in Colorado when I taught at the Air Force Academy and man, there are a few better feelings, right? You're just so excited.
00:44:58
Speaker
But the interesting thing about ski boots is that you also feel amazing when you take them off at the end of the day. There's something wonderful about skiing that almost always, certainly not always, but almost always,
00:45:15
Speaker
You're excited to start that activity and you're also excited and ready to finish that activity. Other examples I often give is I talk about wearing the uniform when I used to wear the uniform and I have a different kind of uniform now I teach in a three-piece suit because I try to look like a philosopher and pretend like I live in England in the 1800s. And I feel really excited when I put that on at the beginning of the day because I'm excited to go teach my students. And certainly when I wore the uniform of the country, I was excited to do that. I thought the work I did was meaningful.
00:45:43
Speaker
But oh my goodness, do I love taking that off at the end of the day and getting into cozy pants and getting into my pandemic wear. That's a wonderful feeling as well. I typically feel this way, and maybe this is a flaw of character, but I typically feel this way about company. I'm always excited when company comes and stays with us. It's joyous. It's wonderful. We love opening up our home. It's great to interact with different people.
00:46:08
Speaker
But being a philosopher, I'm much more introverted than I was when I was younger, and so I also am very, I enjoy it very much when they leave. And I think that one of the things that we need to look for when we think about happiness, and one of the things I think the Stoics encourage us to do
00:46:25
Speaker
is to frame things more often and to find more things in our lives that are like ski boots and uniforms and company, right? We need more days that we don't need to remind ourselves as Marcus did, you know, that we weren't made to like
00:46:41
Speaker
get under the covers and feel warm. We were made to experience the world and to help others and to serve humanity. More days that we're excited, that we beat the alarm out of bed and that we go and do the thing that we're excited to do. And more days when we come home at the end of the day and are ready for that to be over, that it was good, that it was great, that it was glorious. And I think that that's something that we don't talk about a lot enough.
00:47:12
Speaker
in our conceptions of happiness and certainly in our conceptions of stoicism, that it is much about appreciating the thing as it is and not wanting more of it than is befitting or appropriate. Being able to go on a vacation
00:47:30
Speaker
and enjoy it, but enjoy when it's done, right? Being able to go to work and enjoy it and enjoy when it's done, being able to hang out with our friends and enjoy it and enjoy when it's done, being able to have, I mean, Stokes probably wouldn't be a big fan of this, but I'll say mindless entertainment, right, on occasion, but also being like ready to turn it off and to go do something more significant.
00:47:56
Speaker
I think that that's an under an underplayed and underappreciated aspect of what we're looking for in a life well lived and I think I think in realizing why the Stoics say we should focus on the time the limited time of all things of cups of human beings of our own lives allows us a way into into that by saying that
00:48:20
Speaker
You know, more of something isn't always better, right? We should joyously accept the world as it is. Absolutely. I think that's an excellent place to end. Thanks so much for coming on. Yeah, great. Caleb, as always, this has been amazing and it has both been fun and has made me think about stuff in different ways.
00:48:42
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Store Conversations. If you found this conversation useful, please give us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or whatever podcast platform you use, and share it with a friend. We are just starting this podcast, so every bit of help goes a long way.
00:48:57
Speaker
And I'd like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. Do check out his work at ancientliar.com and please get in touch with us at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback or questions. Until next time.