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Is Stoicism Possible? (115)
870 Plays10 months ago
Caleb and Michael discuss an objection to Stoicism: the impossibility objection. Along the way, they talk about the challenge of living by Stoic principles, especially in extreme situations, and whether achieving the ideal Stoic sage is possible.
03:26 The Argument
14:47 Why It Matters
17:06 Stoicism Doesn't Require Unrealistic Control
27:15 Forceful Impressions
35:44 Can We All Be Sages?
44:54 Can Anyone Be A Sage?
50:10 Wrapping Up
***
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Transcript
Varied Reactions to War and Interpretation
00:00:00
Speaker
One thing happens to six different people and they could all feel different about it. They all go off to war and they all feel different about it. Why do they feel different about it? Because how you feel about it is up to you. And what that means is not that you can create your own narrative out of nothing. You have the reality, you have the ability with no training to shape your reality. What it means is that your reality is determined by how you interpret, process the impressions
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to Stoa Conversations.
Stoa Conversations Weekly Schedule Announcement
00:00:29
Speaker
My name is Caleb Ontiveros, and just a little bit of housekeeping before we get this conversation underway. Michael and I are updating this podcast to a weekly schedule. We'll be aiming to release new episodes once a week, as opposed to our previous twice-weekly schedule.
00:00:51
Speaker
that frequency will be more sustainable for us and also will enable us to focus our energies elsewhere in the Stoa ecosystem, since of course we also have the mobile app, courses, newsletter, and so on. As always, reach out to us with any feedback and such. And that's it in terms of updates.
00:01:16
Speaker
Here is our conversation.
Objections to Stoicism: The Practicability Problem
00:01:19
Speaker
Today we're going to be going through an objection to stoicism. Both a theoretical and a practical objection, I think.
00:01:30
Speaker
Both of us have been reading through Epictetus's Enchiridion, a new translation and guide to Stoic ethics, by Scott Aitken and William O. Stevens, two past Stoic conversations guests, and
00:01:48
Speaker
They have this chapter covering objections to stoicism, and we're going to be talking about one of those objections, what they call the practicability problem. Basically, I think maybe the impossibility objection is another way to state the issue, the idea that stoicism is impossible.
00:02:08
Speaker
And Scott and William, they won't be around to defend themselves, but we'll be going through it anyway. And they will even have them back on to talk about any objections we have. But I think it's an interesting one.
Importance of Understanding Criticisms of Stoicism
00:02:20
Speaker
It's well stated and it is a common objection or difficulty people have with stoicism.
00:02:28
Speaker
Yeah, I think whenever we're, uh, talking about stoicism or whatever you take something seriously and direct your life around it, you should know the criticisms against it and you should have an answer to those and you should think carefully about them. Uh, so let's dig into this one. I think it's a common one. I ultimately don't think it's very compelling, but, uh, you know, let's do our best to present it charitably and see if I can do a good job stating why I think it's, it doesn't succeed. Why I think it's not a good criticism of stoicism at the end of the day.
00:02:59
Speaker
Cool, cool. Yeah. So we'll go to, we'll start by laying out the issue and then state the argument, this impossibility objection.
Can We Control Beliefs and Desires?
00:03:12
Speaker
And then, you know, go through some responses. I think both Michael and I might have slightly different ways of responding to, to the objection. Maybe, maybe no, but I will see, we'll see how it goes. Yeah, let's do it.
00:03:27
Speaker
Cool. So stating the arguments, I think.
00:03:31
Speaker
There are different ways to put it, but I think there are two observations, two potential issues with stoicism. And the first is that thought that many people have, which is that you cannot really control your beliefs, desires, or aversions. You can't control those things that stoicism allegedly says you can't.
00:03:57
Speaker
So if someone says, you know, don't think of a pink elephant, you can't help but think about it. That's some thought that just popped into your mind.
00:04:08
Speaker
And I think in general, you have beliefs, desires. Can you change that desire to not like a given food by willingness? Can you change that immediate reaction to a given stimulus? It doesn't seem like that's always possible. So then there's that thought. There's not always a pause between stimulus and response. There's that well-known phrase in between stimulus and response. There is a pause. And in that pause,
00:04:35
Speaker
you find your freedom, but perhaps that's just not always true. Some stimuli force you to have particular beliefs, desires, and aversions.
00:04:47
Speaker
So that's one thing, and if you want to provide an example of that, the second point is that we cannot believe that only vice is the only evil.
Dionysus' Rejection of Stoicism After Pain
00:05:02
Speaker
So a key dogma of Stoicism is that virtue is necessary and sufficient for happiness. You can say that virtue is the only good.
00:05:17
Speaker
that's not technically correct when it's basically close enough. And of course the corollary of that is that vice is the only evil, which I think is fundamentally is just correct in the right reading of Stoicism.
00:05:29
Speaker
And there's a museum story that Cicero tells of a student of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism. So he had this fellow Dionysus of Heracleia. He tried to live by Stoic doctrines, but when he suffered through passing several kidney stones, he announced that he would no longer be a practicing Stoic because the pain of passing the kidney stone is clearly a bad thing.
00:05:57
Speaker
So that's that. Just a concrete example of someone cannot truly believe that bias is the only evil. They cannot believe that stoic dogma, and therefore there's that sense that stoicism is going to be impossible. You can't really control your beliefs or desires. You can't bring yourself to truly internalize stoic principles at the end of the day.
00:06:26
Speaker
What's your thought at that at first pass? Well, I mean, so there's that example of the stoic can be happy on the torture wreck, but we should change it. So the stoic could be happy with kidney stones. That's when everyone's like, I don't believe it. Sounds impossible. Yeah, so it's the practicability problem. The idea is that
00:06:50
Speaker
If stoicism is impossible in practice, then it shouldn't be something you base your life around or something you aspire
Agency, Control, and Sagehood in Stoicism
00:06:59
Speaker
to. The point here, trying to take this as terribly as possible, is that something like the sage, something like achieving happiness in stoicism,
00:07:08
Speaker
requires certain facts about the world, facts about our control over our psychology, facts about our agency in the way that we direct ourselves. And then the stoic advice is in response to those facts. So given that we're the kind of people that have control over our psychologies, this is the way you should live.
00:07:30
Speaker
And so the idea would be if those facts are not true, then the ethical arguments of stoicism don't follow. Um, so it, it, maybe it's not necessarily that, well, the man is not mistaken about pain being evil. Um, like maybe he is still mistaken. Maybe vice still is the only evil, but the entire way.
00:07:55
Speaker
Stoicism describes itself as focus on the dichotomy of control, this focus on intellectual exercises, this idea that virtue is knowledge, vice is ignorance. Maybe these kinds of things all kind of fall apart if we're not the kind of people that have agency over our minds to the degree that the stoic idea of the sage proposes that we do. Remember, the sage is someone who never makes a mistake.
00:08:20
Speaker
The sage is someone who never ascends to something without either suspending judgment or then accurately reflecting on whether or not it's true or false. It's a really high bar, but the idea for the Stoics is that it's conceptually possible.
00:08:37
Speaker
Certainly conceptually possible, but practically possible. A human being could do this, even if it would require the perfect, you know, all the perfect circumstances to come together, even if it would only be once every 500 years, a human can do this. And the argument is something along the lines of a human can't do this.
00:08:55
Speaker
I have lots of arguments against that, or some that come to mind, but I think just first laying that argument on the table as clearly as possible. It does seem, on the face of it, true. Whether or not it's true when you're a perfect stoic that's impossible, certainly something that people that are progressing or practicing come up against all the time.
00:09:19
Speaker
We don't seem to have the control over our beliefs and emotions. The Stoics say that we do. And this idea that certain external things can actually force their way into our minds. So I think I would divide into two camps. There's one, this idea that you can't control the internal. The example you gave, I can't make myself not like a food I like or dislike a food I do like. I can't will myself to change some internal states.
00:09:47
Speaker
That's one thing. And then this idea that like, well, there are actually things that can break down the wall of the inner Citadel. There are actually things that can force them way forced their way inside your mind, whether that's the pain of kidney stones.
Stoicism and Extreme Events: Can It Withstand Intense Pain?
00:10:00
Speaker
That's a, you know, it's a, it's a good example cause it stands out, but you can think of other things, maybe other kinds of traumatic events, um, other kinds of, uh, you know, intense circumstances and ones that make you angry and make you want revenge, maybe make you sad.
00:10:15
Speaker
This idea that there's certain things in life that are just going to break down that wall. And maybe stoicism is good advice about traffic, but it's not good. But there's some things that you just can't, you just won't have control over. They're just going to be too powerful. That that's my way of framing it. And I think, I think there's something to it. I think it's worth a response.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So just one way I think that's well put, especially that distinction between what you can will, what's under your control in that sense, and then the thought that some things are just going to overpower the stoic disposition. Some things are going to break down the inner citadel, as you said.
00:10:51
Speaker
And one way to put this into argument form is the thought. And I think this is basically how Scott and William do it. It's something like, if you ought to live in accordance with the philosophy of life, you can do it. So that's basically, ought implies can.
00:11:10
Speaker
You cannot live in accordance with Stoicism because we don't really control our beliefs, desires, or aversions. That's that point about internal, was it possible to internally will, and we cannot believe that vice is the only evil, or perhaps something similar. That's that point about things truly overpowering the inner citadel, things forcing themselves upon us such that even though it has nothing to do with virtue or vice, we think that some things are truly evil, some things are truly good.
00:11:39
Speaker
And I think, yeah, I think you could do that. The, I think you could do the good way too. I don't think it only has to be evil. You could give some example, you know, there's the sample of the person with kidney stones, but then there's the example of somebody, you know, I don't know, eating, eating some great ice cream and be like, can you really think this is not a good thing? Maybe you can or not, but I don't think the thing's breaking down the inner citadel just has to be negative. I guess what I'm saying.
00:11:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a good point. That's either a good ice cream or... I think Stoics can accommodate that to some extent. That's maybe a longer discussion. They're maybe taking a drug and not doing anything, literally just lying there, but having some ecstatic experience would be another kind of... Yeah, pleasure, right?
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. So the thought would be, look, if you can't live in accordance of philosophy of life, then you shouldn't adopt that philosophy. So you shouldn't be stuck because in the end of the day, you can't be stuck. Similar to the sometimes people might argue against Buddhism because at least some versions of Buddhism promote some idea of enlightenment. But if that enlightenment isn't possible, then it's an empty promise at the end of the day and it doesn't deliver.
00:12:47
Speaker
And indeed, the Stoics themselves are often telling us not to want the impossible. There's that line from Marcus Aurelius, you know, why are you frustrated with shameless people? There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. It's impossible to live in a world without shameless people, and therefore you shouldn't be surprised. In a real sense, you should embrace that reality.
00:13:12
Speaker
work with it. And likewise, someone might wonder, okay, given if that premise that you cannot live in accordance with stoicism is really true, then you shouldn't be stoic.
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, I love that formulation. Because I always think when you abstract stoicism out to the furthest extent, me at least, I think it's this idea that you should live in accordance with nature. You should live in accordance with the way things are. You should not put yourself at friction or tension with the way things are. And so in that sense, if the Stoics got psychology wrong, if the Stoics got the practical parts of moral development wrong, then it'd be pretty unstoic to try to stick to them.
00:13:54
Speaker
um, in the sense that you'd be putting yourself out of accordance with nature. And maybe you can get these arguments. This is why people sometimes can find stoicism. Like maybe someone making this argument would say those people that find stoicism difficult or judgmental, or they feel ashamed of themselves when they're not being good stoics, maybe a proponent of the, uh, practical, uh, practical ability problem.
00:14:18
Speaker
I'm having trouble saying that one. That's why I call it the impossibility objection. It's impossible to say that's the issue with it. Uh, shows itself. Maybe somebody would say, well, look, you're now you're experiencing this negative emotion because you're holding yourself to this impossible standard. When really you should maybe go with the flow a little bit more and not hold yourself to something that people just aren't made to do or aren't able to do. Right. Right.
00:14:49
Speaker
I once had a conversation with someone who just went through a messy divorce. They had found stoicism and they asked me, look, is it really possible? Can I really become a sage, someone who is able to navigate through these moments with
00:15:08
Speaker
equanimity. And that's, I think, a conversation that this objection brings to mind because it was a moment that sort of showed the practicality of it, right? Some people do wonder, especially when they're in these
00:15:25
Speaker
really tragic situations, difficult moments. Can I transcend this? Is it possible to be the kind of person from some
Applying Stoicism in Personal Tragedies
00:15:36
Speaker
stoic stories where they weather the death of their loved ones in a completely tranquil manner where they overcome adversity to such an extent that it almost seemed like it wasn't there?
00:15:51
Speaker
Yeah, and it raises something, it raises an interesting point about the, you know, if the stoics use this metaphor of philosophy being kind of like a doctor's office where it's painful. Well, the doctor's office is supposed to cure you, right? And so if you're, if you go into the doctor's office, you're, you're experiencing this pain, you're committing all this time to learn stoicism, and then it's not curing you because it's teaching you a set of exercises based on premises that are false.
00:16:19
Speaker
It's teaching you a set of kind of a way of thinking about moral development that's based on a picture of the mind that isn't true. One where you have control over your beliefs, your desires, your versions. One where you're able and then that other one is interesting. One where you're actually able to because all that other stuff could be true.
00:16:40
Speaker
But if you can't actually convince yourself that virtue and advice is the only good, humans are just born imperfect. We're just born the kinds of people that can't actually maintain the belief that would make us happy. That's kind of tragic, but the reality of it would be we should probably differ from something that just trying to force ourselves or diluting ourselves into believing we're being stoic sages.
00:17:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. That's well put. And I think there is a sense in which that second case of extreme pain, extreme pleasure is more challenging than what we call this first issue, this issue about do you have complete control.
Epictetus on Gradual Change vs. Instant Transformation
00:17:23
Speaker
So let's move into some of these responses.
00:17:26
Speaker
I think my first move here, which is an important one, an essential one, is that I think the idea that stoicism expects us to have
00:17:39
Speaker
the ability to change in an instant is a mistake. So if we think about Epictetus's psychology, and he's probably the person who one could come away thinking that he has this view the most, you know, he praises
00:17:57
Speaker
cynic sages in a sense that suggests perhaps sagehood is possible. But in his psychology, we have that impression the world is presenting us with, and then internally, you know, what's up to us? Well, what produces beliefs, desires, and so on is our process of reflection and assent.
00:18:26
Speaker
And whenever we reflect, we're bringing all of our past beliefs, desires, and such to that process. We're bringing them to bear on every impression. And I think even though we have on Epictetus's picture the power of ascent, we're only able to
00:18:54
Speaker
wield that with our powers' reflection and the impressions we're given. And because of that, you should not expect instant change, right? Because you're always going to be bringing your character to whatever situation you face. Yes, you can shape your character over time, but Epictetus doesn't think you can just rejigger your entire history, your entire past of judgments, desires, and so on.
00:19:23
Speaker
Yeah, you don't assent in a vacuum. You assent as a person, the person you currently are. You reflect as the person you currently are. You can put in a lot of work to give yourself a leg up by being intentional, by reflecting on stoic theory, but at the end of the day, you just are the person you are. And that can be a bit discouraging, but it also works the reverse way, right?
00:19:43
Speaker
If you're not a person who's quick to anger, you don't enter a situation involving anger or the possibility of anger with a 50-50 shot of being angry or not. You're reflecting on a situation as the person you are, which is somebody who doesn't take things personally, isn't quick to anger, doesn't feel like people owe you things. That has positive benefits too. The downside is that it has consequences. You reflect as the person you are, as you said,
00:20:16
Speaker
When Epictetus says you control your beliefs, your desires or aversions, well, we have episodes on this. It's better translated as those things are up to you. And what's meant by that is that your beliefs, you have the beliefs because you assented to them. You assented to them because you reflected on them. So you caused them by bringing the person you are to bear upon your impressions, reflecting and then assenting to them.
00:20:35
Speaker
Now, so when we think that we
00:20:43
Speaker
Now that doesn't, yeah, as you just said, it doesn't mean you can control them. It doesn't mean you can snap your fingers, but they are up to you as in you caused them. And, and I think this argument is true. We don't need to necessarily get into that here through, through, through exercises, focused attention and effort. You can correct that process and reverse that direction of your, of your character as well.
00:21:07
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's the first move to the impossibility objection, which is just that in the relevant senses, our beliefs, desires are up to us. We can change them and stoicism doesn't
00:21:28
Speaker
entail, that doesn't mean that we can just will. I think as you say, we don't just assent in a vacuum, we don't will in a vacuum. And in fact, although change in an instant may be possible for some of us in some situations, it's exceptionally, exceptionally unlikely.
Expectation of Imperfection in Others
00:21:49
Speaker
that's related to the stoic advice that you should expect people to be less than ideal. You should often expect them to be Marcus Aurelius, of course, in meditation chapter, to expect people to be ungrateful, surly, selfish, and so on. Why not just expect them to act like sages because you know
00:22:16
Speaker
that they, we have a past histories of making vicious judgments. And that's why it's a safe bet to expect people to not be perfect. And why the civics advise, you know, things like don't go expecting Plato's Republic, don't go into the world expecting utopia. Yeah, another thing, I think that's exactly right. Another thing that this objection gets wrong, or at least the way that
00:22:47
Speaker
the, at least the way that, um, Scott and William present it is that idea of, well, I can make you think things like, Oh, don't think of a pink elephant. Now you did think of a pink elephant. That's just the, that's the quintessential misunderstandings. Those is them, right? Because all you've done there is produced an impression.
00:23:06
Speaker
You can also blow a foghorn, you can clap in front of my face and I'll blink. Obviously people can produce impressions on other people. That's part of what it means to live in the world. What you can't do is you can't produce a belief without my consent, without my participation. So I can't say, believe there's a pink elephant in the room.
00:23:28
Speaker
And then everyone goes, ah, now I believe it. Shoot, you've caused it in me. That's, that doesn't, that doesn't happen. So yeah, people can create impressions and sometimes impressions are little things that sit in your brain. Sometimes impressions are little jingles, you get stuck in your head, but those are not beliefs. It doesn't become a belief without that ascent, without that participation from you.
00:23:50
Speaker
Um, I, you know, I see here there, there, there's some examples, there's some instances and there's some counter examples of things that do become immediate beliefs, things that you don't have control over. Um, at big TDS uses the example I see put here of, you know, daytime, try to believe that it's nighttime when you're outside and the sun's out and the person goes, I can't, it's impossible. Some, some things do go straight to our beliefs.
00:24:16
Speaker
But the stoas called those cataleptic impressions. They were impressions that were the kinds of things that were so, the truth of them was so self-apparent, which is not to say we can't, um, we can't begin to be skeptical of those kinds of things. Right. I think, I think there is some practice that can happen there, but that's what's, that's what's going on there.
Challenging Forceful Impressions with Skepticism
00:24:43
Speaker
And then the Stoics ultimately thought, whether you believe that's the case or not, that we are designed to have cataleptic impressions. We're designed to be the kinds of things that could, that can easily and quickly believe things that are self-evident, mostly to do with kind of physical facts, right? Physical facts about the world, like daylight, that there's a person in front of you, you know, that there's something flying towards your head, probably things like this. So I don't see that as that much of a problem.
00:25:12
Speaker
either. Certainly not when we have the possibility of becoming skeptical about them if we think they're the kinds of things we might end up getting wrong for whatever reason. If you think about these kinds of forceful impressions, one case is they are correct impressions that the daytime or sorry, I should say that they produce correct beliefs.
00:25:37
Speaker
And at daytime, as an example of that, we look outside, we see the sun is there and so on. And then there's also the case where there are forceful impressions that produce false beliefs. It needs to be a little bit careful here, but I think as you're saying,
00:25:59
Speaker
If you have that possibility to apply skepticism to those kinds of impressions, then the issue is sort of thought of similar to how we've been talking about change in general. Often these impressions feel so forceful because of the
00:26:25
Speaker
beliefs we already have and there's that question, can you wield skepticism well enough to unprogram yourself to think that some stimulus is true and in fact, it's an illusion and so on. So there's something to say there. There's also views about
00:26:51
Speaker
Of course, the Stoics thought people could have damaged, you know, like rational faculties. So in a lot of these skeptical scenarios, the case of that skeptics brought against Stoics, it might be better to analyze them in terms of the people not being rational or having, you know, deficient rational capabilities, you know, classic cases where you're being deceived by a demon or something of that sort.
00:27:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think, I mean, I think, I think you framed it really well, right?
Resisting Overpowering Impressions Through Experience
00:27:21
Speaker
So it's hard to talk about this without getting into the second point, which is the second point we framed as like certain things can force their way into the inner citadel, right? And then we said, well, there's, that seems to happen all the time. I go outside and it's daytime. I'm forced to think that it's daytime, or at least it seems like Epictetus is saying that.
00:27:40
Speaker
If somebody, you know, if I have kidney stones, I'm forced to think a bad thing is happening to me. It seems like an impression, an extreme impression is forcing its way, bypassing assent, not allowing me to suspend it. And then the point that I was taking you to raise Caleb was, um, that look, because we just bring our current character to bear on a situation, some people might actually be forced.
00:28:06
Speaker
right um i don't know i i think of like a young child maybe and they see a scary movie for the first time they might actually be forced to think a bad thing is happening but when you grow older you kind of understand what a movie is you understand okay this can't actually hurt me then there there there there what was a
00:28:27
Speaker
overpowering impression no longer becomes overpowering. And you raise the matrix example, you can do that around fact about the world. Like, you know, once you, once you realize, wow, AI image generation exists, there can be videos of people talking that aren't actually them talking. So you've gained information. And then what was a forceful impression? Well, that's that celebrity saying that thing can become a kind of a skeptical situation. I don't actually know if that's the case or not, because I know AI exists. I know this can be faked, right?
00:28:58
Speaker
Maybe like Plato's cave, right? I firmly saw shadows. It was forceful. But now that I know there's this other thing
00:29:04
Speaker
And then I think about that in terms of, and I'm just jumping ahead, but I think of that in terms of the kidney stone example, right? Which is maybe the normal person, maybe the progressing stoic cannot help, but it can be true that it is impossible for them to not help, but think a bad thing is happening to them. But does that mean that every human being cannot feel that way? Does that mean it is impossible for any human being?
00:29:28
Speaker
to not think a bad thing is happening to them when they're feeling extreme pain. I don't think that's true. And then the stoic argument would just have to be something along the lines of, well, you're capable of becoming the kind of person that doesn't, isn't forced to think of bad things happening to them when they're going through a chronic, painful, in kidney stones, I don't even know if it's chronic, but a painful physical circumstance. Yeah, hopefully it's not chronic. Yeah, exactly.
00:29:54
Speaker
In that case, then you got us, then you got us, then you're done. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. I think that makes sense. I think, especially with this, one framing on this is to think of stoicism like other programs of transformation.
00:30:21
Speaker
story of Milo, the wrestler, famous Greek wrestler, and he got exceptionally strong. How did he do that? He, as a child, decided, you know, he's going to pick up a calf every day. And he did that every day until it was a full grown cow. You know, that's the story.
00:30:43
Speaker
And you can think at the very first instance when he's just starting that project as a child, there's a sense in which he ought to be strong given that he wants to be a wrestler. That's his goal. He's chosen that as his role.
00:31:00
Speaker
But he cannot achieve that overnight. He can become strong, but just because he can't at the moment, as a weak child, deciding to become a wrestler doesn't require him to think something like, oh, because I can't be as strong as a wrestler is at this very moment.
00:31:25
Speaker
something that I ought to become. Just he has to work through that with the body he has and build up that muscle over time. And then I think the Stoics have a similar view, except
00:31:41
Speaker
they urge us to think of the mind as much more capable and we often tend to think it is. And I think that's something that people who have really pushed themselves in other endeavors come to learn, whether it's the Milo example or not.
00:32:02
Speaker
I keep going back to kidney stone example. It's just cracking me up. Like there's, there's people push themselves in all kinds of endeavors. They climb Mount Everest, they dive for eight minutes, but they don't, there's no kidney stone competitions. Maybe there's, maybe there's just the type difference here. Um, but no, it's a great point. And I mean, we just need two terms, right? There's something about like current possibility and future possibility. And the Stoics think that we have a future possibility.
00:32:30
Speaker
We have that potential latent within us. Maybe they think that's impossible for some.
00:32:36
Speaker
very, very sick or morally perverse individuals. But for anybody listening to this podcast, they think we have that kind of future possibility. So for this example, this counter argument is kind of like somebody who can't run very fast being like, well, I could never run a five minute mile. So I'm not going to start training. That doesn't make any sense. But they mean I could never run it right now. And it's like, well, that's not what I'm saying.
00:33:03
Speaker
I'm saying you could run it, you know, I'm saying, you know, like Milo, you could become strong. Which is just very, yeah, very persuasive for me. But I do think a mistake you'll make, because they want to read and be inspired by stoicism and then be transformed. But it's the sad reality of it is like, just so it seems a lot of work, right? It's takes a long time to become strong like Milo. And same thing with stoicism. Right, right. It's a lifetime project, of course. And I think the fact that
00:33:32
Speaker
You know, people have the same experiences when interpret it differently. Brings to mind that question, you know, what makes their experience different?
Interpretation Shapes Experience and Reality
00:33:44
Speaker
And for the Stoics, it is the interpretation, essentially, of the events. Some people are going to find vicious battle a evil because they think it's not worthwhile. It's obviously painful.
00:34:00
Speaker
Whereas others will interpret it differently if they think there is some overarching cause of justice that justifies the battle. They may even see it as having some kind of glory, right?
00:34:16
Speaker
that makes it not just not evil but a positively good thing and then the question this you know the challenge for the Stoics is alright interpretation makes a huge difference now make ensure that you're interpreting things correctly ensure that you are seeing the world as it is
00:34:36
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it's just such a great example to describe it in, right? Like one thing happens to six different people and they could all feel different about it. They all go off to war and they all feel different about it. Why do they feel different about it? Because how you feel about it is up to you. And what that means is not that you can create your own narrative out of nothing. You have the reality, you have the ability with no training to shape your reality. What it means is that your reality is determined by how you interpret
00:35:02
Speaker
process the impressions or the, the, the, in this case, the, the war, the fight, whether that's a bloody useless nihilistic event or something that was meaningful, something that was glorious or something like this. Right. So your, your response is up to you. That's a fact of the world has shown that six different people feel six different ways. And then the other stoic point is that you can craft yourself to become the kind of person to respond to these events.
00:35:31
Speaker
if not certainly better, but they would say at some point perfectly, at which by perfect just means accurately, right? And then suspend judgment when you can't. Right, right. So I think maybe if Scott or William wanted to push this objection more, they might
00:35:50
Speaker
say something like, well, take the Milo example. It's not true that everyone can become Milo. Milo is an exceptionally strong wrestler. Some people, they're just not going to have the right body, the right genetics to be an exceptionally strong, capable wrestler.
00:36:11
Speaker
So why can't we say the same about people's abilities of mind, that they're structured? What makes some painful experience good for one person, bad for another is interpretation. But what determines that interpretation is, to a large extent, the structure of their mind, and that's going to be determined by
00:36:38
Speaker
genetic factors, environmental factors, and so on, such that some people cannot become sages. So I have an argument for that, or a counter argument. Let's hear it. Let's do it. You're going to have to listen to it. So to pull that back a step,
00:37:02
Speaker
There's this argument, the arguments like stoicism is impossible, and we spent the last 20 minutes saying, well, maybe it's not, or maybe the reasons you argue that's impossible aren't that good. But there's this other counter argument, which is just like, so what? Like, just even if stoicism is impossible, what does that matter?
00:37:20
Speaker
And I kind of want to bite the bullet on it. I don't see, it's not, even if sage hood is impossible, even if we can't become Milo, I don't really see what that has to do with the way that I choose
Daily Stoic Practices: Progress Over Sagehood
00:37:33
Speaker
to live. I don't really see the negative consequence. And I think a lot of this comes from viewing this craft analogy, viewing living well as a craft.
00:37:42
Speaker
You know, if basketball coaches talked a lot about the best basketball player, the perfect basketball player, the fact that I could not become the perfect basketball player because I'm not seven foot two eighty. Well, it doesn't this doesn't really have anything to do with me becoming better at basketball. And insofar as being better at basketball is worthwhile, I still just want advice about how to become better at basketball. And then if it's living well, instead of basketball, you still can help me live well. Even if I can't live perfectly, I still just want to live well. Right.
00:38:11
Speaker
Um, I suppose the counter argument there would be something like, well, it gets in the way of, it gives you a bad target. Like if I start training, not for my own body type, but I start mimicking the sage or start mimicking the seven foot basketball player in a way that just doesn't help me actually get better. But I don't think stoicism does that. I don't think stoicism.
00:38:31
Speaker
demands things that are unreasonable. I think stoicism demands of us things that are very reasonable, very practical, very grounded. And I pulled this example from Epictetus, which is like, you know, you tell me if Epictetus is asking for something here that seems impossible.
00:38:48
Speaker
And he says here, this is Discourses Book 1, Chapter 4. He says, so where is progress to be found? If any of you turns away from external things to concentrate his efforts on his own power of choice, to cultivate it and perfect it so as to bring it into harmony with nature, raising it up and rendering it free, unhindered, unobstructed, trustworthy, and self-respecting.
00:39:11
Speaker
And if finally, when he gets up in the morning, he holds in his mind that which he has learned and keeps true to it, if he bathes as a trustworthy person and eats as a self-respecting person, putting his guiding principles into action in relation to anything that he has to deal with, just as a runner does in the practice of running or a voice trainer in the training of voices. This then is the person who is truly making progress. This is the person who hasn't traveled in vain.
00:39:40
Speaker
And I think of that and I think of the stoicism is asking that it's asking, you know, you wake up in the morning and you focus on perfecting your choices, focus on making good choices. You focus on bathing as a trustworthy person. When you go to the bath house, eating as a self-respecting person, when you go to the dining hall or the restaurant. And if you do that, it's been worth it. You've made progress. You've become better. That is not some abstract.
00:40:06
Speaker
target, that's such a grounded target, right? Going back to my basketball metaphor at the risk of, you know, I know I'm not very good basketball player, but you know, if you wake up and you dribble a bit better, you shoot a bit closer to the basket, you know, this is somebody who's making progress. And that's what's those systems asking. I don't see there this idea of the Sage messing us up. I don't see the idea of the Sage giving people something that's like unrealistic in a way that's harmful. That's my best shot at it.
00:40:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think potentially focusing on the sage could be harmful in the same way that focusing on an expert basketball player when you're an amateur can be harmful, but that could be true whether or not it's realistic for you to become that best basketball player. You know, skills proceed instrumentally at different times, different models are useful.
00:41:02
Speaker
I think there are two ways to object to this argument. One of the foundational assumptions is this focus on the sage. You ought to be the sage if you're stoic, and then becoming a sage is impossible, therefore you shouldn't be stoic. One is to say that
00:41:23
Speaker
the sage is possible in the relevant sense. And then the other is to argue that stoicism doesn't depend on it being possible for you to be a sage or whether or not it is, in fact, possible. And I think forever it's worth the move that Scott and William make is to say that
00:41:54
Speaker
If you're a stoic, you should aspire to be a sage without thinking that you ought to be a sage, which is essentially just saying, it's fine if you can't become the sage in so many words. And the move you just made is similar to that move, which is just that whether or not you can become a sage doesn't matter. What matters is that you can incrementally progress.
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think you could throw out Sagehood.
00:42:26
Speaker
And you've still got a perfectly functioning ethical system that works like a craft that you develop over time and get closer to, you get better at, even if perfect doesn't exist. One thing that we're not talking about here is the traditional stoic view that you're either virtuous or you're vicious. They make this metaphor that, you know, everybody's drowning. Some of us are just closer to the surface of the water than others.
00:42:55
Speaker
And if you took this view, this idea that there's the people that are happy and then everybody's equally miserable.
00:43:02
Speaker
I think of this more of a rhetorical stoic position. I don't think of it as something that it doesn't mean there's no value to progressing, doesn't mean there's no value to improving the craft. But if we took that in the literal sense and we said, life is a binary, there's those that are happy and those that are equally miserable, and then you said it's impossible to achieve,
00:43:27
Speaker
sagehood, well then you'd have a system of ethics where it's impossible to be happy and there's no point to do it. But that I think is something that the Stoics walk into. I think they walk into this kind of objection because they make those kinds of arguments or talk in that kind of way. But I don't think that's the point of the reason the Stoics talked in that kind of way. I think that point was to not
00:43:57
Speaker
not think that you could have parts of virtue or parts of knowledge. It's connected to this idea that knowledge is an all or nothing thing. And it's also to not, uh, I think be content with certain amounts of progress in certain kinds of, in some parts of your life and not others, like that kind of thing. You know, like I'm going to learn stoicism so I can.
00:44:19
Speaker
You know, be more cool and collected when I scam people. It's like, you can't really apply stoicism to one part of your life, but not to another. Uh, and so I think the stoics were responding. I suspect the motivation of this kind of language was to respond to those kinds of ideas, not to say, you know, everybody's equally miserable except the sage of which none of us are. So, uh, none of your work meant anything, right?
00:44:46
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sympathetic to that reading as well. I think that's the right way to think about it. I think another point that is relevant here is that…
00:44:58
Speaker
Sagehood is not the position of omniscience.
The Attainable Ideal of Sagehood
00:45:09
Speaker
The sage isn't someone who knows everything. It's just the position of someone who can act virtuously in whatever situation they're presented with.
00:45:21
Speaker
And that means not having some almost demi-god-type status, but rather doing your best in every situation, given what is possible. I think there's another reading, perhaps, of sagehood that makes it more attainable. Yeah. It's perhaps still unlikely to occur.
00:45:51
Speaker
But when you read it as the kind of thing where maybe Socrates was a sage, maybe Epictetus was a sage, Marcus, Marcus is a bit complicated. But if you give it as the kind of thing that you can give to certain people, just like experts of the craft, basketball, you have people that are in the Hall of Fame. They're just good at it.
00:46:11
Speaker
They're just good at doing this thing at a high level. And the sage is just that person, the person who's good at it. I think the sage gets a bit weird because it's this idea of never making a mistake, which is not something you could ever say of any basketball player. There's no basketball player that never makes a mistake. So it doesn't become you've reached a certain level of mastery that you can't ever air, I think. And then that connects to some of this
00:46:38
Speaker
the stoic idea about knowledge being reinforcing, right? Because this is what we're talking about, right? We're saying you bring your character to bear on an impression. But if you have a perfect character, you can't ever really ascend to wrongs, because you're not bringing anything faulty to bear.
00:46:57
Speaker
into the world. So you've got the objective thing that happened. You're not interpreting it in a bad way because you don't have baggage or false beliefs to get to give yourself a kind of a loaded interpretation the same way. Uh, you know, I might have a loaded interpretation that somebody, um, you know, somebody is, uh, doesn't like me because I was bullied when I was younger or something, right? We bring our baggage to bear on the way we
00:47:22
Speaker
present these impressions, but the wise person doesn't do that. So they get the objective event, they represent it pretty accurately already. And then they reflect on it with their like perfect mind. And so it's a, it's a, it's a kind of a self-reinforcing thing. I do want to be, I do, I, we should say here that the Stoics do hold it to that high standard where they would never make a mistake. Now, whether or not we, we change on that or not, but I think that's the weird part of Sagehood. Cause it's like.
00:47:51
Speaker
Who could ever do that, right? Pretty, pretty hard. Yeah. But, but another thing to remember there is to remember that of course that it's exceptionally difficult, but.
00:48:01
Speaker
that that doesn't mean the stoic knows the positively right thing to do in every situation. Yeah, totally. They sometimes want to avoid making a mistake by avoiding having any false beliefs, right? So they might
00:48:22
Speaker
They might just be someone who, like Socrates, really, he's of course the fundamental model for the Stoics, knows when he doesn't, and then holds firm to his conviction when he does know what he ought to do.
00:48:39
Speaker
So maybe, maybe it's kind of like maybe a basket. I keep trying to do these sport metaphors just to make sure I understand maybe instead of like a basketball player, it's like a rock climber or something. And the rock climber is the person who climbs all the walls or says, I'm not going to climb that one because that's a bit too, I'll hurt myself if I do.
00:48:56
Speaker
And it's like that level of mastery, not the person that can climb every wall, but the person who climbs many difficult ones and then knows when to step out or knows when they need to ask somebody else. And as you said, yeah, one way to avoid errors is to just always know what to do, but another way to avoid errors is to really understand your own limits of understanding. And so the stage isn't expected, as you said, they're not expected to always know what to do.
00:49:20
Speaker
Yeah. An example, of course, as you think about games of chance, the sage as a poker player may not be the person who takes home the most winnings. First, because it, of course, is a game of chance, but also they might not be the best poker player in the external sense. Maybe they're just
00:49:42
Speaker
you know, limited by, uh, maybe some people are just in a real sense, uh, smarter than they are. They have more of a social sense, but the Sage is a poker player, you know, plays as well as they can given the body they have. And of course the cards they're dealt, I think is another way to think about it. Yeah. Great point. Cool. Cool. Anything else on this?
00:50:10
Speaker
Um, yeah, I mean, I'm being interested in people. If you, if you made it this far interested to what, what you think, do you think the, um, practicability problem is a significant issue or not? Does that something you wrestle with yourself? Is it.
00:50:26
Speaker
Do you think stoicism is impossible, but anyway, you know, doesn't matter? Or do you think it is possible and you would reject it if it was impossible? And those are all interesting questions. Happy to hear from you. Um, I keep this conversation going, but I enjoyed this one. I think we're both pretty, neither of us are really concerned by it. Doesn't really deter me at least, but interested to hear what other people have to say and think.
00:50:52
Speaker
I agree with that 100% if others follow up. Interesting to hear that as well. I think this is one of those objections where although it's not that persuasive in and of itself for either of us, you do get a touch on some common mistakes and also practical challenges and related issues of stoic theory and practice.
00:51:17
Speaker
Yeah. I think it's, I think the, well, just to add to that, I think it's like, it's a good, I think criticisms are always a good thing to think about. And if you can't respond to a criticism, you should probably not shy away from it, but think about it some more. Cause it really helps, uh, push your own understanding. So these things are fun. Thanks.
00:51:37
Speaker
Alright, thanks Michael. Until next time, thanks for listening to Stoa Conversations. Please give us a rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify and share it with a friend. If you want to dive deeper still, search Stoa in the App Store or Play Store for a complete app with routines, meditations, and lessons designed to help people become more
00:51:58
Speaker
Stoic. And I'd also like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. You can find more of his work at ancientlyer.com. And finally, please get in touch with us. Send a message to stoa at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback, questions, or recommendations. Until next time.