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Rob Colter on Stoic Freedom (Episode 120)
921 Plays9 months ago
In this podcast, Caleb speaks with professor Rob Colter.
Rob has extensive experience teaching Stoicism in camps, universities, and prisons.
He talks about the powerful idea of Stoic freedom, how he’s seen Stoicism make a difference in people’s lives, and why he calls himself a Socratic.
Learn more about Wyoming Stoic Camp here.
(00:51) Stoicism
(03:49) Rationality
(09:10) The Central Idea: Freedom
(21:34) Teaching Stoicism
(27:06) How Stoicism Changes Lives
(33:32) Role Ethics
(35:28) Underrated Stoic Ideas
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Thanks to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Stoic Philosophy
00:00:00
Speaker
I think the radical nature of freedom in stoic philosophy is also underappreciated. People sort of, I guess, see it maybe a little bit, but I'm not sure that it's often enough appreciated how powerful and radical that idea is.
00:00:19
Speaker
Welcome to Stoic Conversations. My name is Caleb Andoveros, and today I am happy to speak with Professor Rob Coulter. Rob is a senior lecturer at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Wyoming. He's the founder and director of Wyoming Stoic Camp and the director of Wyoming Pathways from Prison. Thanks for joining.
00:00:48
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
Understanding Stoicism's Core Beliefs
00:00:49
Speaker
Glad to be here. Well, let's start with a broad question, but it's always, I think, a fun place to start. What's your elevator pitch for stoicism? Right. Yeah, I was thinking about that when you suggested that as a topic. I suppose it depends on how long the elevator ride is, right? Yeah. Are we in a big city elevator or are we in a
00:01:13
Speaker
Wyoming style elevator. What I would start with is basically this, that stoicism is a philosophy of life that has a view about the way the world works and about the sort of creatures that we are. And it talks about how to live well in a universe that works that way. And if I'm going to be a bit more expansive, it's a view that
00:01:42
Speaker
takes rationality as sort of a fundamental feature of the structure of both the universe and of people like you and I, hopefully, and from that it teaches us how to live
00:01:56
Speaker
Well, to have eudaimonia, which we often translate as happiness, which is a suspect translation in a variety of ways, but it teaches us how to live well, how to live a good life. And a world is fundamentally rational in the particular way the Stoics think. In that way, it's similar in sort of the broad umbrella way to a number of other philosophies of life in that
00:02:25
Speaker
many of them also have a view about the way the universe works and a view about the sort of creatures that we are and how we can sort of live in a way compatible with all of that. But the Stoics have some very sort of specific views about how that works out, as do other schools.
00:02:41
Speaker
Awesome,
Stoicism and the Rational Universe
00:02:42
Speaker
awesome. Yeah, I think if you think about, you know, what's the philosophy of life? It's an account of what the good life is and how to achieve it. And to come up with that account, as you say, you also need some picture of what is the, you know, at least some level of detail. What kind of world do we live in? What kind of creatures are we? I was just going to say that, you know, certain sort of fundamental features of
00:03:08
Speaker
of one's worldview about the way the universe works is going to sort of tell you what sort of things are possible and what aren't in the world that works that way. And if you have an incompatible way you're trying to live with the way the world works, you're in trouble. And that's one of the fundamental things that the Stoics emphasize is that our unhappiness is usually
00:03:35
Speaker
a function of a mismatch between what we're trying to do and what the way the world works and the way human beings work as well. So it's about trying to find that fit in a really important way, I think.
00:03:49
Speaker
That's well put. I'm curious, how do you think about, so we have this idea, rationality is essential to the Stoic picture, which seems absolutely correct. How do you explain that? How does that show up in the universe? And then how does that make a difference to what kinds of creatures we are as well? Yeah, good. So the Stoics are committed to a view that the universe is fundamentally rational. Now, there's some debate
00:04:19
Speaker
I think about how that's exactly cashed out among modern thinkers and practitioners of Stoicism, and also I think to some extent in antiquity as well. I mean, ancient Stoicism is a tradition of at least five centuries long, and there was a lot of room for thinking and developing and bouncing ideas around and stuff like that. But at a minimum, I think what the Stoic view is committed to is that the universe is
00:04:49
Speaker
structured in such a way that it can be understood. And it can be understood by creatures like us that are capable of reasoning. Now, the Stoics think that there's a causal connection between those things.
00:05:04
Speaker
we are rational because the universe is. So we're built in a certain way to come to understand the universe as it is, if we do it well. Of course, we can mess that up in any number of ways. And some stoics think that rationality extends to some sort of plan that's established on the world. And some stoics, both in antiquity and
00:05:34
Speaker
Yeah, contemporarily as well, some sort of maybe even divine plan in antiquity, Epictetus, for example, is happy to talk about the divine and God in his works all the time. And some moderns are attracted to that view as well, but I think there's controversy about how much of that we want to put on our understanding of the universe.
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah, so I suppose if you think about reason or rationality is inherent in the world and that means it has a kind of order to it. There are these causal relations, think of ideas, laws of nature, a term we would use today and because of the way
00:06:23
Speaker
our minds are structured, we can also, we can come to know that order in a variety of different ways. So I think that's maybe one central aspect of the universe as it has this kind of order. And then as you were saying,
The Concept of Internal Freedom
00:06:36
Speaker
there's this other aspect to reason, which is around a plan or providence. And that's where you think about rational beings, they have goals and ends. And then they think about, how do I best achieve my goals and ends given
00:06:52
Speaker
though what's available to me. And as you say, there are different ways of cashing out. What does providence look like? What is this idea of the, you know, what's the telos behind things that the both moderns and nations take?
00:07:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's quite right. I mean, at a very minimal level, you know, there are texts from antiquity that tell us that, you know, by fate, right, so that we use this word fate, sometimes in this context, we just simply mean the interrelatedness of causation, right? The causal interactions and relations between everything in the world, that's all we really mean by that.
00:07:31
Speaker
There's no great planner out there or anything like that. And, and, but again, I think different still exposed in antiquity and contemporarily want to, uh, I guess what, want to make it thicker than that sometimes. And, and there's reasons in the texts from antiquity to do that as well, but at least it's at least that I think at least that interrelations causes.
00:07:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's worth pausing a little bit more here and saying like, so you have, for example, Epictetus, and Epictetus sometimes says things to the effect of the world is organized for the best, which suggests there's, you know, providence, some plan, things are set up, everything happens for a reason. That's true, and it's a good reason, or at least a reason that justifies those things happening.
00:08:22
Speaker
Whereas I think you can also read this idea of providence as at least what you said or maybe even a notion between the best possible world and one without and just think, well, the world is organized in such a way that we have enough to live well. And in that sense, there's this telos behind things. That's another way to take it. I think that's right. I think there's a spectrum of how thick that notion of providence might be.
00:08:51
Speaker
among different thinkers on the topic. But it's at least that causal thing. And as you point out, for other Stoics like Epictetus, famously, or Marcus, even in some passages, it's a quite thick notion of providence, right?
00:09:10
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, it's a fascinating topic. Maybe we'll come back to it if we have time. But I think, of course, one essential concern that people have when they learn about stoicism is they're trying to make some difference to their life or transform themselves or their world in some way. So one question I had is, what's the central tenet
00:09:34
Speaker
in stoicism that you've seen make the most difference in other people's lives? Yeah, that's a great question. I was thinking about that in the... So I just, at the end of the fall semester, I was teaching a course on philosophy as a way of life to a class of incarcerated students. And
00:09:59
Speaker
In this context, the students and the incarcerated students have things by some accounts maybe have not gone the way they wanted it to. One of the things, they're often thinking of them as prisoners. Where they live is the lockup or something like that. This is the language that's about
00:10:27
Speaker
It's about restrictions of freedom, right? And one of the things that really jumped out at me this time, and it's jumped out at me before, but it was really made vivid, is this idea from stoicism that, in fact, what freedom really is, is my ability to make choices about my own
00:10:58
Speaker
activities. So my decisions
Teaching Stoicism's Impact
00:11:01
Speaker
are my decisions, even in a context like being in a, you know, being in a maximum security prison, right? Epictetus has that famous bit from the discourses where, you know, he's imagining a conversation between someone in power and a stoic and they say, well, I could throw you in prison, chain you up. And the stoic response, well, you could chain my leg, but not my
00:11:27
Speaker
You know, not my ability to choose, right? I could have you beheaded. Well, when did I tell you I had a neck that couldn't be cut, right? You know, those things are things you can do to me, right? But within that, there's a freedom that is unassailable, that can't be restricted. And it's my choice, even in some circumstances, merely about the attitude I'm going to have towards
00:11:52
Speaker
thing, right? So I've taught a bunch of different students in a Prism context, and they talked to me about things like being in solitary confinement and things like that, where when equipped with some stoic ideas, they recognize that even in that extreme circumstance,
00:12:15
Speaker
there's still a freedom to be found, something that's fundamentally theirs that can't be taken away, that is also sort of the ground from which we can be good people, right? It's that freedom to be, to live well, even in circumstances that many of us would find unbearable, right?
00:12:39
Speaker
And I think the idea that even in a world that is structured out of these causal interactions that has some sort of thicker, thin, providential structure, there's still freedom in that is one of the things I think that's incredibly powerful. And I really see it with students
00:13:03
Speaker
you know, who are incarcerated, but I see the students, you know, just on a university campus or at my stoic camp and stuff like that. When we really recognize that, you know, it, it allows us to say, sure, I, the world could impinge on me in all sorts of ways, but I'm still fundamentally responsible for who I am and for the choices I make. Right. That, and I'm free to make that sort of crux of ideas.
00:13:30
Speaker
I've seen be really powerful for a lot of people in a lot of different circumstances. Hmm. Yeah. That's, uh, I think that's, that's really well put and it is such a powerful idea, but it's, but it's also a radical one. I think we tend to think about freedom as maybe the absence of constraints or having a wide range of options, different life plans, decisions we could make and choose. So how do you explain what grounds that idea for the Stoics?
00:14:00
Speaker
Well, gosh, I mean, so an image from the ancient stoics that I think is really useful here is the image of the dog tied to the cart, right? So imagine you're a dog tied to a cart, right? You're leashed and you're going to go wherever the cart goes, right? That's not really up to you, right?
00:14:26
Speaker
Well, what continues to be up to you, and here I'm, of course, using language from Epictetus's and Caridian, what's always up to you is whether you get dragged by that cart and you're miserable or if you trot along happily next to it. So it's the idea that some, as Epictetus puts it, some things are up to us and some things are not. The things that are up to us, the things that's really mine, the source of my freedom,
00:14:56
Speaker
is my ability to choose how I go about dealing with the things that the universe brings to me, right? So all of us face hardships of some sort or other, right? You know, a loss of a friend or a family member, losing a job, getting sick, all these sorts of things are things that we can't really do anything about, right? We can't change the world. But what we can do is have
00:15:26
Speaker
an attitude that's focused on us living well in the midst of whatever the universe gives us. Now, and that's, I mean, I think for most of us, that's oftentimes easier said than done, but it's one of those things we can work on, right? The sort of practice-based stuff that you find in the number of these texts really focus on. Having me be better at dealing with
00:15:55
Speaker
whatever the universe brings to it. Yeah, I think so. It brings to mind the stoic line. Fate, the willing, it leads. The unwilling is dragged behind. Yeah. Or something to that effect. Yeah.
00:16:13
Speaker
And also, of course, the central idea, especially as it's expressed by Epictetus of what's up to you, what is your own, and whatever that is, that must be the source of your freedom. So for him it's, and for I think it's safe to say the Stoics in general, it's this ability to manage the events life throws your way to think through the situations, the questions life presents you.
00:16:42
Speaker
with. And that's where you find your freedom. That's right. And that's what, I mean, as you pointed out a few minutes ago, that's really a radical idea. So it's not only that, how did you put it? Well, so what I would emphasize is that that ability to really make these choices about
00:17:05
Speaker
you know, what I go for, what I take to be true, all those sorts of things that Epictetus lists for us. That's not only where my freedom is, it's the only place my freedom is, right? And all the other sort of things we think of as freedom, especially maybe as Americans or whatever. I mean, that's a mistake, right? We're getting it wrong.
00:17:35
Speaker
It's not just sort of a matter of opinion. It's just wrong to think that freedom means these other things because that's impossible. And that's
Personal Reflections on Stoic Practice
00:17:47
Speaker
radical.
00:17:49
Speaker
Yeah, quite. Yeah, I think for many people, you have this political idea of freedom, of liberty, and that's connected to the vision of what a good life is. And I think Stoics can certainly offer interesting insight on the political debate, but for them,
00:18:05
Speaker
the political idea, liberty, external constraint. You're always externally constrained in some ways. The source of what makes a life well-lived cannot hinge on whether you have this kind of political liberty. Yeah. I mean, so there's American political liberty in that sense, right? But actually, there's a really interesting study of the notion of freedom in antiquity by Michael Frater.
00:18:33
Speaker
He actually makes use of a Greek notion of political liberty to frame the sort of freedom that the storage are talking about. In the ancient political context, what it suggests is what it was to be free, was to be a free citizen of Athens or of whatever, meant that you could do anything appropriate for
00:19:02
Speaker
a citizen of Athens, as a citizen of Athens. So that could be participating in the assembly or serving on juries or these sorts of things. But the freedom you have as a free citizen of Athens is limited to the sort of thing you are in that context. And so the way Freida puts it is that
00:19:24
Speaker
The sort of freedom that here he's mostly focused on Epictetus, the sort of freedom that Epictetus has in mind is like that. We are completely unconstrained insofar as the things that are appropriate for a creature like us. Namely, a creature like us is one that is constrained by rationally living in a universe of the sort that we have. So any other freedom would be merely illusory
00:19:53
Speaker
But we are, in fact, unconstrained insofar as we're the sort of creatures that we are, right? So putting these dots together, we get this notion of freedom as fundamentally connected to the stoic conception of the universe and the stoic conception of a rational agent in that universe. That is complete
00:20:18
Speaker
unconstrainedness with respect to the universe and our place in it. I don't think the idea of political freedom is completely unhelpful, I would say. There's an analogy there to be made. Being a free citizen of Athens or a free citizen of the United States or whatever doesn't mean I'm free to fly from the rooftops. It means insofar as I'm a citizen,
00:20:45
Speaker
of a particular political entity, I'm unconstrained with regard to what such citizens can do. And when we generalize it into a broader conception, I think that's actually a helpful analogy. At least I find it.
00:21:02
Speaker
Got it. Yeah, that's well put. I suppose the idea is nothing's holding you back from using your reason well. That's right. That's what's constraining you from managing your impressions in the Epictetus picture. Yeah. And you're responsible and the source of your decisions. And I think that's probably also connected with other ancient ideas of liberty, being the source of
00:21:27
Speaker
of your life, not necessarily. Yeah, absolutely. Well, another topic of course I wanted to ask about was, what have you learned from teaching Stoicism to others? What have you learned about the Stoicism from this process? You know, I've been teaching Stoicism for, well, a long time.
00:21:52
Speaker
I mean, my specialty is preaching Roman philosophy, and one can't really teach that at a college or university without teaching some of the Hellenistic schools like Stoicism. But I taught it for over a decade before I came to see it as a viable actual way of life.
00:22:20
Speaker
For me, I mean, I used to sort of just kind of blow it off as like, Oh, this is just like ancient Dr. Phil, right? Here's some life advice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds great. Whatever. Um, good luck with that. But so, so my attitude towards it shift shifted that, I mean, I can remember the moment, to be honest, in a classroom teaching Epictetus where I was like, Hey, wait, you could actually sort of live this or make use of it.
00:22:50
Speaker
One of the things that comes out in the variety of contexts in which I teach, talk about stoicism at my camp, at the workshops I've done around the country and around the world, in incarcerated contexts and stuff, is that it helps
00:23:15
Speaker
to be able to see it in a variety of practical contexts and the consequences of those contexts. So being able to talk about it, not just as an academic subject, but as something that's lived or livable, I think really brings people together on this. So I tell people at my camp, my job is not
00:23:46
Speaker
to convert you. Well, I mean, this is not, and I tell this to my students in prison, my job is not to convert you, but I do want you to kind of try it on, right? Try it on like a, you know, you're at the secondhand store looking for a new winter coat. Let's see how it fits. Does, can I, you know, can I maneuver in it? And so I asked people to sort of really try to think about how we might live in this way.
00:24:16
Speaker
And that, I think, really brings out maybe the pinchy bits for particular people who bring in different backgrounds and different sort of background assumptions, different experiences, can really show us where those pinchy bits are. And they can vary from different people. Some people really react
00:24:40
Speaker
to the, to the God and divine language that we see in some of these texts. Some people really react to, um, you know, some of the freedom and determinism stuff. Some of them really react to some of the practical advice that we see in, you know, one interesting discussion I had recently was with some students in prison about Marcus Aurelius's
00:25:11
Speaker
recommendation in book two, chapter one of the meditations where he says, well, I remember when you wake up in the morning and meet all kind of nasty people, one of the most famous passages. But at the end they said, but remember that they're just like you and that it's our job to work with them anyway. And some people react to that.
00:25:33
Speaker
And they said, why would I want to work with that guy who did this thing, or did this thing to me, or hurt me? Why would I want to cooperate with someone who hurt me? And so we can talk about that then, right? But the Stoics have a view about that. And maybe you don't want to accept that. And that's fine. But we should talk about it. So I think the idea that by teaching or talking about Stoicism,
00:26:04
Speaker
This is not a conversion thing. I'm not proselytizing. I don't go knocking on people's doors, right? But rather that we can maybe try it on and share a little bit of a journey with it. There's a really, I think, effective way to approach it.
00:26:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's great because it forces you to, one, there's of course that encouragement to try the philosophy to think about how you would apply it, but in that process, you need to get more concrete. What does it look like to manage my emotions in a stoic way?
00:26:42
Speaker
What does this idea of kinship that the Stoics have with other fellow human beings, how does that make a difference in my life? What does that mean for my roles, the circumstances I find myself in? And getting concrete like that I think is always useful for people. Absolutely. I mean, that's certainly been my experience.
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah. For you, how has stoicism, of course, you've teach it, spent years studying it. But as a philosophy of life, how would you capture the extent stoicism has made a difference? Oh, it's made a huge difference in my life, right? And, you know,
00:27:27
Speaker
A lot of times, especially in like online forums and stuff, you see people saying, well, are you a stoic? Are you a stoic? Is that stoic, right? Would doing this be stoic? And I don't know, I'm often pretty dubious of that sort of discussion, right? I mean, I think for me, most of the time, stoicism provides a pretty great
00:27:58
Speaker
Think if I had to label myself, I'd actually call myself a Socratic, which interestingly is actually something that a lot of the Stoics would have been happy with too. In particular, one of the things I think is really important is trying, and again, like most of us, I'm far from perfect at this, but trying to sort of know what I don't know.
00:28:24
Speaker
You know, I've studied this stuff a long time and I've taught it for a long time, right? But I don't know, there's some things, there's some things I'm not sure about, right? I mean, so we were talking earlier about how this notion of provenance might be in stoicism. And to be honest, I kind of waffle about that. I, you know, I, I think about it for a while in one way. I read somebody's article and makes me think about it in a slightly different way. And, you know, so I've, I've sort of gone.
00:28:53
Speaker
probably up and down that spectrum we were imagining multiple times over the years. But one of the things I like to keep sort of at the forefront of my thinking about stoicism, about philosophy of life, about all these sorts of things, is this line from
00:29:13
Speaker
the dialogue that Plato wrote called the Credo, or the Credo, where Socrates is in prison, and he says to his friend Credo, who's trying to get him to leave prison, he says, and I'm gonna paraphrase, right? Look, I've always been, and I still am the kind of guy who wants to go with the argument that seems best upon reflection.
00:29:41
Speaker
If you've got something new, let's do that. Otherwise, let's just go with that that we've worked out, right? So this idea that I take from that is, yeah, I've got some opinions about some stuff. I've got some things that, you know, some that are sort of more fixed than others, but it's all revisible, right? It's all sort of revisible and it's not dogmatic, right? So if I'm a stoic, I think I'm a stoic who suspends judgment a lot.
00:30:12
Speaker
Because you know, I don't know it works pretty well right when I think about What's up to me and what's not and you know? I run into situations that cause me difficulty and I remember basic stuff like you know, it's not really You know, it's not really what happens that matters. It's how I react to it how I deal with it It's not really You know the outcomes that matter it's about my character
00:30:40
Speaker
And when I remember that some things are up to me and some things are aren't, and I focus on other things that are up to me, I find they do a lot better in life. And my life goes a lot better and something like, I don't know, uh, there seems to be a much more of a smooth full flow of life as, uh, we might read. Um, so yeah, I'm probably mostly stoic, but there's a strong Socratic there.
00:31:09
Speaker
In your day-to-day life, how do some of these stoic ideas play out? Oh gosh, all the time. I try to, not always, but I try to do a little journaling to keep a conscious and self-reflective approach to my life.
00:31:32
Speaker
You know, but as I've advanced in my career as many academics do, I'm getting more and more sort of administrative duties. I'm currently department head of our department. And, you know, when I'm filling out evaluations and all the paperwork that administrators have to do, I have to keep remembering, you know, that.
00:31:51
Speaker
You know, this is the role I'm in and you know, what's in matters is that I do this as well as I can, whatever's in front of me. Right. This is an ideal we can find all over the place in Marcus who has to remind himself that as emperor, you know, there's stuff I got to do and also in difficult situations. Right. You know, some of the things I mentioned, right. And some of the things that are scattered all about the stoic texts, right. The idea of like, is this thing really up to me or not? Right.
00:32:19
Speaker
You know, one of the ones that, that really affects me in a way, I think super positive. There's that passage in Epictetus and Caridian about, you know, well, I'm fond of a jug, right? You know, and that way if it breaks, I won't be upset because I know what kind of thing it is. And then it immediately goes to, you know, if your child or daughter, if you kiss your child or, or your wife, um,
00:32:47
Speaker
Remember that you're kissing a human being that way when they die, you won't be so upset. And a lot of people find that completely monstrous, really. Right? Right. But for me, what that does is it reminds me that human beings are finite creatures. We're all going to die.
00:33:09
Speaker
in one, you know, or our relationships with others are also finite, whether they're family or not. And, and for me, that helps me really put really highlights the fact that those relationships are something to chair. And, and so all those things are stoic ideas that really enrich my life on a daily basis.
00:33:32
Speaker
Right,
Exploring Stoic Systematic Nature
00:33:33
Speaker
right. Just thinking about that last one that I, that reminder both that we are mortal and that the ones we love are mortal as well can, I think, really provide a sense of both urgency, use the time you have well, and also gratitude and focus on the time you have with others. I think that's always a good reminder.
00:34:01
Speaker
But one of the things I wanted to say is the idea is about roles too, I think is especially, especially helpful in something we're trying to push more, you know, help other stoics know more and more about is this idea of role ethics. Just because, especially in my life, I found it so useful to think about, you know, what relationship am I in right now? What does it look like to be excellent in this relationship and have that be a guide to, you know, those decisions that, you know, jumping back to that earlier theme of
00:34:29
Speaker
freedom, decisions that the truly free being would make in this position. So thinking about role ethics, having this idea of what it is to be excellent in the relationships we find ourselves in has been especially useful to me as well. Yeah, I find that super helpful, right? As a father, what is it to be a good father and how can I be that?
00:34:55
Speaker
father, husband, son, teacher, member of my community, citizen of the universe, right? These are all roles that we might find ourselves in. And as Epictetus in particular, but many of the other stoics also sort of at least point at, um, these can be really good guides for us, right? To figure out what should we do in these situations? Well, what a good father should do or what a good teacher should do.
00:35:23
Speaker
And if you get lost appealing to those roles, recognizing those roles can really be helpful. Right, right. I think so. Yeah, absolutely. What aspect of Stoic philosophy, Stoic theory, with all this in mind, do you think is perhaps most underrated by people who are a little bit familiar about the philosophy, but may still underrate this idea? Yeah, underrated is triggered by whom?
00:35:52
Speaker
I think I want to say two things, if that's allowed. One is that I think it's maybe not appreciated as much by a lot of people. It wasn't by me for a long time how systematic and unified the stoic picture really is, right? I mean, I think
00:36:18
Speaker
some of these stoic philosophers are among the greatest philosophers in history. I think one could make a pretty strong case that precipice would be on the Mount Rushmore of Greek philosophy, especially if we had more of them. We had one of those 700 books. Yeah, exactly. Even one.
00:36:44
Speaker
So the systematicity, right? Like we've hinted at, right?
00:36:50
Speaker
The conception of the universe, the conception of what a human being is, and the conception of freedom and stuff are intimately related. But we could push that even farther, right? It's true of their conception of how language works, of how logic works, details about how their physical theory works, the notorious theory of total mixture that gets just maligned in antiquity and today.
00:37:19
Speaker
You know, these all
Conclusion and Resources
00:37:20
Speaker
fit together. Whether they're right or not, different question, but they fit together in a really important way, in a way that very hard to sort of excise out pieces of this systematic picture, right? There's a great story I heard. I heard it like third hand.
00:37:43
Speaker
And I believe it was originally attributed to the really important scholar of socialism, Susanna Bopsie, who said having a systematic philosophy is very much like laying new carpet in a room. It's like, no matter how careful you are, there's going to be some corner that's a little wrinkled.
00:38:04
Speaker
Right. And different systematic philosophies are going to have different wrinkly corners. Right. And you kind of have to just pick which one you want to put the sofa on. Right. And I think that's true of stoicism. I think that's true of Platonism. I think that's true of Aristotle's picture and so on. So I think it's underrated or underappreciated how systematic stoic philosophy
00:38:29
Speaker
But another one I'd want to go back to is even though we've talked about it a fair bit, I think the radical nature of freedom in stoic philosophy is also sort of underappreciated. People sort of, I guess, see it maybe a little bit, but I'm not sure that it's often enough appreciated how powerful and radical that idea is.
00:38:55
Speaker
which is, I guess, part of the reason I wanted to harp on it a little bit. But those are the two I would come up with. Right, yeah. I think thinking about systematicity, it's certainly true that more and more you learn about stoicism, you start to see, these are the connections between, of course, the ethics, logic, and physics. And you can think about, how do those ideas play a role in human development?
00:39:23
Speaker
to begin with. Then you have these different stoic theories of how we grow, how we get to make different decisions. Well, I was just going to say, it's like there's a cynic. Yeah, that's right. They're saying we're ignoring the value of a lack of systemicity perhaps.
00:39:44
Speaker
And yeah, just thinking about the developments, thinking about stoic stories, thinking about things at different scales, the universe, the city, the individual, the mind, and having that perspective, I think. How does order show up in the universe and the human being? How does it show for me as an individual? It can really enhance how one implies stoicism, in addition to being of just intellectual interest. Yeah, absolutely.
00:40:12
Speaker
No, I think it is more than just an intellectual interest or fetishism that one might have systematicity. I think it's deeply effective in how one lives. If one's going to live in one of these really systematic ways, then what you think about truth really affects how you live in a variety of ways. What you take to be true
00:40:39
Speaker
deeply affects your beliefs. And this is a point that's not just in the stowings, it goes back to Socrates, right? Your beliefs about everything are connected in ways that can affect how well you live. Yeah, this is a feature, not a bug, as they say.
00:41:00
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, I think this is one way in which the Stoics are Socratic. They're always thinking about where our contradiction is showing up in our common intuitions. How do we make sense of what's going on as a whole?
00:41:15
Speaker
And even I think some of their most radical philosophical ideas, like you can live well no matter the external circumstances, are grounded in ordinary observation and you're thinking through which of these observations hold up, how can we pull them together in a story that makes sense.
00:41:40
Speaker
Totally agreed with you. Excellent. Well, is there anything else you'd like to add? I think that it's great. I've enjoyed this conversation quite a bit.
00:41:51
Speaker
Excellent. Yeah, this has been great. I'm glad we got a chance to meet and it would be fun to spend some more time, I think, diving into these ideas about Providence we touched on if we got a chance or perhaps even different stoic ideas of individual freedom, what that might look like at the political level, communal level and so on may also be additional topics to explore. Yeah, that could be a lot of fun.
00:42:18
Speaker
Well, is there any links or resources you want to share with people before we hop off? Well, I will be making an announcement on social media and various other platforms very soon about what will be the 10th iteration of Wyoming stoic camp coming up in May of this year.
00:42:38
Speaker
Wyoming stoic camp is an opportunity for us to go up into the high Rocky mountains and read stoic philosophy in the woods and go on hikes and have bonfires and try to avoid things like moose and bear. Um, so yeah, this will be the 10th year that we've done it. Um, and, uh, you know, people have come from all over North America, but also from Europe and it's, it's a, it's a good time. Uh,
00:43:08
Speaker
Well, it's an indifferent time. We can be good and participate. Excellent. Yeah. Well, uh, do check that out and then, uh, it's been a pleasure, uh, pleasure chatting with you, Robert. Yeah. Great chatting with you too, Caleb.
00:43:26
Speaker
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.
00:43:44
Speaker
more 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 ancientlyre.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.