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Six Stoicisms: Modern vs Traditional Stoicism and More (Episode 8)
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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
In this conversation Michael and Caleb discuss six different kinds of Stoicism:
- $toicism
- broicism
- stoicism (little s stoicism)
- Traditional Stoicism
- Academic Stoicism
- Modern Stoicism
Some of these are misunderstandings, or at least incomplete, other's are much more meaningful uses of the philosophy. Michael and Caleb talk about each with the aim of correctly understanding theory and determining what's useful to apply in ordinary life.
(01:37) $toicism
(09:17) Brocism
(16:50) little s stoicism
(24:17) Modern Stoicism
(31:28) Academic Stoicism
(40:38) Traditional Stoicism
***
Stoa Conversations is Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay’s podcast on Stoic theory and practice.
Caleb and Michael work together on the Stoa app. Stoa is designed to help you build resilience and focus on what matters. It combines the practical philosophy of Stoicism with modern techniques and meditation.
Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): stoameditation.com/pod
Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com/blog/stoa-conversations/
Caleb Ontiveros has a background in academic philosophy (MA) and startups. His favorite Stoic is Marcus Aurelius. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/calebmontiveros
Michael Tremblay also has a background in academic philosophy (PhD) where he focused on Epictetus. He is also a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His favorite Stoic is Epictetus. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/_MikeTremblay
Thank you to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
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Transcript
Stoicism as a Modern Replacement for Religion
00:00:00
Speaker
There's this interesting emergence, too, as people move away. I think the relationship between stoicism and religion is very interesting. But I've always kind of suspected as people have moved away from having religion serve that function, there's become more space for philosophies as ways of life or more need for overarching value structures to adopt
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:24
Speaker
it.
00:00:24
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.
00:00:41
Speaker
In this episode, Michael and I talk about the range of different stoicism in the world. Our main focus is to strike the right balance between stoic theory and practice and ensure that the theory is correct and the practice is useful. Once again, this is a new podcast, whether it's rating or subscribing in your favorite podcast player or reaching out with any feedback comments, we'd greatly appreciate it.
Meet the Founders of Stoa
00:01:09
Speaker
And here is our conversation.
00:01:13
Speaker
My name is Caleb Ontiveros. I'm one of the founders of Stoa. Yeah, hi, everyone. I'm Michael, one of the founders of Stoa as well. And today we're going to be talking about different kinds of Stoicism, the plethora of varieties one has with this philosophy.
Six Types of Stoicism
00:01:31
Speaker
Yeah, great. Maybe I'll just jump right into it, because I made a list here. I thought this was an interesting idea for an episode.
00:01:39
Speaker
because there's lots of ways you can approach doses and lots of different ways to think about it. So I've written down them and my plan was to kind of go through them one by one and then we'll talk about them to both to explain for those that aren't familiar, but then also kind of flesh out criticisms or our opinion about these certain approaches.
00:01:59
Speaker
So right off the top, the ones that I have down, and then we'll go in, are broicism, that's one, dollar sign stoicism, so where the S is written with the S as a dollar sign, small s stoic.
00:02:14
Speaker
traditional stoicism, modern stoicism, and academic stoicism. Those are kind of six categories that I wanted to talk about. And starting with the first three, broicism, dollar spine stoicism, and small aesthetic, I think these are misinterpretations of stoicism or ways that stoicism gets taken in the wrong direction. And I think the later three, traditional stoicism, modern stoicism, and academic stoicism,
00:02:40
Speaker
are not misinterpretations, but they're different ways of kind of approaching or embodying the core essence of stoic philosophy.
Productivity and Dollar Sign Stoicism
00:02:50
Speaker
So starting with that, I wanted to start off with dollar sign stoicism. So I call it dollar sign stoicism, but this is the one when it's written, the S has a dollar symbol instead of an S. And what this is, is this is,
00:03:07
Speaker
to use stoicism only as a set of kind of life hacks or a set of tools to achieve an end that is not a stoic end, to achieve an end that is something other than virtue, I would say. So the
00:03:24
Speaker
The kind of paradigm of this or the stereotype of this is an entrepreneur or maybe somebody in the kind of pejorative representation of somebody in the tech space who is incorporating the dichotomy of control to increase their productivity or to increase their capacity to excel at work.
00:03:46
Speaker
But then just using these stoic tools to become more productive in their professional pursuits, in their monetary pursuits specifically, that's why it's dollar-stine stoicism.
00:04:02
Speaker
So they're still attached to these external goods. They're still attached to something that's very non-stoic, and that's their final goal, but they've incorporated these stoic strategies for handling stress, these stoic strategies for handling adversity, and they're using those to kind of achieve their monetary goals instead, their kind of professional goals, or their goals in pursuit of external goods.
Understanding Broicism
00:04:28
Speaker
So that's the first one. What do you think about that Caleb?
00:04:31
Speaker
That's a good intro of six different versions of Stoicism. I mean, it does seem like Broicism is clearly a misinterpretation of the philosophy. But one thing one could say in its, to some extent, a kind of defense of using Stoicism as a set of
00:04:49
Speaker
heuristics is our set of heuristics, tools, life hacks, if you will, is that it's the beginning of applying the philosophy. So certainly lots of people discover it through some technique and there's nothing wrong with finding the philosophy through a technique that you find useful.
00:05:09
Speaker
the criticism comes in if the technique is used for poorer ends. And that's something that's central to stoicism is that in one's actions, one should be trying to be virtuous and there's nothing admirable or impressive about using techniques that take you the wrong direction, as it were. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's the right way to think about it.
00:05:36
Speaker
There's nothing wrong with using heuristics or tools, and I often think that kind of that understanding of stoicism is very valuable, and I wouldn't want to criticize people that do it, but it's certainly still a misunderstanding. Or I guess when it becomes dangerous is, I guess there's no harm in saying, look,
00:05:59
Speaker
I'm not an Epicurean, I'm not an Aristotelian, I'm not a Buddhist, I'm not a Christian, but there are certain aspects of these worldviews that I'm going to adopt, I'm going to take on, and that's going to be helpful to me. I think where the dollar sign stoicism
00:06:16
Speaker
is more harmful is when people who haven't really dug into stoicism think they're being stoics. They think, okay, I'm now being a good stoic because I'm effectively moderating my stress as I pursue professional goals, as I pursue the collection of money and prestige and things like this. Then there's a problem because
00:06:44
Speaker
You're not necessarily any more vicious than anybody else. You're not necessarily a worse person than other people who aren't stoic. They don't want to condemn people that have these professional goals.
00:06:58
Speaker
When you've, now that you've misunderstood it, you kind of lose access, I think, to the better parts of it. The, the, the aspects about the importance of virtue, the importance of character over external goods. You lose access to those because you think, well, I already get it. I already understand it. I just, it is just a set of tools. And, um, now I'm making the most of it. Does that make sense?
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. The idea of, or this idea is also related to criticisms. One sometimes hears about selling anything related to stoicism, which the dollar sign in this version of stoicism brings to mind. So there's always the question of,
00:07:47
Speaker
is some work product distorted by incentives that are not directly related to the philosophy or the teaching.
00:07:58
Speaker
what have you. And this is not a unique problem. It's of course a problem that many of the Stoics themselves faced when the ancient Stoics faced when they took money for running their schools or teaching particular students or serving as a tutor. But one should always keep in mind, I think not as something that is a rule that means one should never take
00:08:22
Speaker
money for providing philosophical services, that seems far too strict to me. But as a potentially distorting effect on either your work, you know, our work in particular, or whenever you are consuming other people's works, there's always these incentives that might get in the way of really just expressing truth.
00:08:46
Speaker
Yeah, that was well put, nuanced put. Because certainly like, you know, Mark Srelias and Seneca in particular are very famous for being very wealthy, for not really. And as they should be, if you can balance this money as a preferred indifferent, right? As they should be if they can balance possessing wealth in a way that doesn't compromise their virtue. And as Aristotle talks about,
00:09:12
Speaker
a lot of the time money is complementary to virtue, right? Because the more money you have, the greater capacity you have to help other people, the rare capacity you have to make positive change and positive influence on the world. But yeah, I think that's the part, I think as you hit on this question of incentives, so this idea that
00:09:35
Speaker
you know, is your goal virtue and helping others and money then becomes a means by which to do that or a byproduct of that, or is your goal the accumulation of money and you're now kind of presenting stoic ideas. You're either using stoic tools or presenting stoic lessons as a means by which to do that. There seems to be some sort of
00:10:00
Speaker
perversion going on. I know people that do this that, you know, post stoic quotes and are looking at this as they're
True Essence of Stoicism
00:10:12
Speaker
only taking on part of the picture. And by only taking on part of the picture, they're misapplying or misunderstanding because they're attempting to combine the quote to their worldview, which is often about the collection and the mastery of externals and accumulation of reputation and property and wealth and things like that.
00:10:31
Speaker
So the next one I wanted to talk about was broicism. So first one was stoicism with a dollar sign, second one is broicism. And...
00:10:39
Speaker
To me, brosism is the tendency to use stoicism to promote kind of a masculine ideal or to confuse and combine stoicism with a masculine idea, that masculine idea to be numb, non-feeling, tough, strong. It's to try to reduce stoicism to
00:11:08
Speaker
Not just masculine characteristics, I would say, but perhaps like, I would say misunderstood masculine characteristics that idealize being unfeeling, being like a statue, things like this.
00:11:23
Speaker
My main issue with brosism, it's the same kind of one with the dollar sign stoicism, is I think people can come to stoicism, men in particular, that think, well, I'm having trouble with my emotions. I'm having trouble with my anger. I'm having trouble with my sadness. I want to figure out how to regulate these things, how to understand these things better.
00:11:46
Speaker
But because they're already taking their worldview and then they're interpreting what they learned from Stoicism through that worldview, they end up just taking these things as well. Okay, let's take the dichotomy of control again. If I just detach myself from anything that's not up to me, I'll be numb and I won't feel anything. Or if I just don't care if I die or I don't care if the people around me die,
00:12:13
Speaker
it's taking things I think sometimes too far and I think sometimes misunderstanding the nuance of stoicism's conception of preferred indifference or dispreferred indifference and the people they don't want to, I think sometimes people don't want to hurt anymore or want to be like a certain kind of action hero or certain kind of role model and they take the quick path to that.
00:12:42
Speaker
Rather than the long path, which is the long path is an entirely changing of your worldview, a changing of your paradigm, a prioritization of virtue, and the short path is kind of a cutting off, a numbing, an acting like you've made more progress than you have in trying to jump to the end right away.
00:13:01
Speaker
Again, not harmful in terms of, I think it's good when people try to apply stoicism and try to learn about it, but I still think it's a misinterpretation of the teachings of stoicism, so it provides less value than a proper understanding would.
00:13:15
Speaker
There's a related mistake that doesn't always happen this way but can happen this way where you find stoicism valuable as a tool of emotional management and then only find it valuable as a tool for emotional management. And I think that might cause one to
00:13:36
Speaker
over value, trying to feel particular ways instead of trying to have certain beliefs or make good decisions. That would be the stoic critique on that. None of the ancient philosophers were really solely focused on emotional management but saw
00:13:58
Speaker
emotional management, perhaps with the exception of the Epicureans as something that was really just an upshot from a more fundamental transformation, as you were saying.
00:14:13
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like you keep putting it in much more articulate way than me, which is great. But that's exactly it, right? They say, look, I want to have this kind of emotional management. I want to be able to be cool and collected in tough situations. I want to be able to be that kind of rock or that pillar for my family and have this kind of emotional toughness.
00:14:36
Speaker
But that's not the goal of stoicism. That's an upside to being a courageous, wise, temperate, just person. And so when you achieve virtue or you develop your virtues, that emotional management is the upside of that. But if you try to skip straight to the emotional management, you end up with
00:15:02
Speaker
I often feel it's kind of pretending or a kind of you're numbing yourself or you're detaching yourself. You begin using tools of emotional management, either incorrectly or in ways that are harmful. Yeah, I think the way you were putting it was dead on.
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. The other part of this critique is sort of that it's too broey would be the clunky way to put it, too infiltrated by dubious idea of masculinity when people promote these kinds of ideas around.
00:15:34
Speaker
maybe suppressing emotion or maybe even just not expressing emotion. These ideas are expressed in opposition to another idea. Expressing of all emotions is fine or some norm that at least people perceive that people say that men should express all their emotions or lack emotional control whatsoever.
00:16:01
Speaker
I think what socialism does instead or the way I think people should think about it is sort of cutting through that debate or stepping back and thinking about, you know, what are these emotions? And of course, that's where we've talked about in earlier episodes about, you know, thinking of emotion in terms of judgment. And then it's less of a question of just expressing every emotion or suppressing emotion and more about
00:16:26
Speaker
thinking about how you react to the world and what your place is in it. Yeah, this question, if I understand you correctly, it's not really about the degree to which you feel, or it is not about the degree to which you express these emotions. It's about which emotions you're expressing and why.
00:16:52
Speaker
And what that tells you about, as we talked about in the Stokes and Emotions episode, what that tells you about your character, what that tells you about what you value in the world, what that tells you about how you're relating to the world. And that's the relevant thing, which, as you pointed out, is kind of a third thing. It's different from this view of
00:17:10
Speaker
Well, you shouldn't express emotions because you should be tough, you should be strong, and emotions are weak, or at least potentially weakening and distracting, or everything you feel is appropriate, everything you feel is justified, these kind of two extremes. And it's not even really a Goldilocks solution. It's not a middle ground. It's kind of a paradigm shift and a different way of approaching it.
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah, so I think that's the thing that brosism can miss is it can get caught up in that incorrect dichotomy as you pointed out. So this connects really well with little less stoicism and little less stoicism.
00:17:54
Speaker
Simply put, it's an adjective and it's a term that you apply to anyone that doesn't express emotion, that doesn't express extreme reactions. Those that don't study stoicism or those that aren't into stoicism, you know, most people will know what the word stoic means or know that it has a sense of people who aren't reactive. When I tell people I'm a stoic,
00:18:14
Speaker
Or that I, you know, I'm involved in the stoicism community will always make a joke about or I'll say I'm excited for something they'll be like oh that's funny you're excited for something and you're a stoic. And these are people who are non, you know, they don't know anything about the philosophy but they just know that I'm not supposed to be excited or I'm not supposed to be happy or at least that's their sense of it.
00:18:33
Speaker
And I think a little less stoicism is a bit different because brosism and dollar sign stoicism are, I think, ways that practitioners misunderstand stoicism. And I would say a little less stoicism is an incorrect view about people, that people outside of the stoicism community or people who don't study your practice stoicism view stoicism. And I think it's real harm is that it can stop people from
00:19:00
Speaker
getting into stoicism or stop people from engaging in stoicism because it's that they they view stoicism if they say well all stoicism is is it's a way to become a little less stoic it's a way to become numb it's a way to become unfeeling and i don't really want that that's not what i'm like or that's not that's not what i value and then they don't see these other parts they don't see the
00:19:23
Speaker
the ethics, the ways of living, the more complicated questions about, you know, knowledge and justice and virtue. And so I would say the real detriment to a little less stoicism is that it kind of simplifies what is really a complex and interesting system and it does it a disservice and it makes people not interested in learning more, I would say. What do you think? Yeah, well, the
00:19:51
Speaker
English language, for whatever reason, has its feature of really caricaturing a set of philosophical schools. We call people stoic when they don't express any emotions, we call them cynics when they're being overly negative, or call people hedonists when they're just focused on, or epicureans when they're just focused on pleasure to the extent of other goods when, of course, there are three.
00:20:19
Speaker
philosophical schools that don't hold any of the, when of course there are these three philosophical schools that don't hold the ideas they're being attributed with. Stoics think it's of course okay to experience emotions, there's a whole set, a whole family of positive emotions.
00:20:40
Speaker
that are ideal. The cynics aren't purely negative naysayers by any means, though they are hardcore. And the Epicureans counseled the exact opposite of what people often get called Epicurean for today. So for whatever reason, I think this is just a hangover of how our English language has evolved.
00:21:08
Speaker
this reminds me of when you were mentioning cynic and epicurean reminds me of this meme where it's something hit something silly but it's like play-doh comes back from the dead and somebody mentions platonic love and he's like what does that mean and so it means oh you don't you know you don't have sex and he's like what the hell um um so that's that's that's another way that we've done we've done play-doh dirty and we misrepresent these things
00:21:34
Speaker
Um, yeah, exactly. It's a hangover, but I guess my argument was that it's a, it's a hangover that, um,
00:21:46
Speaker
impedes further discussion or its stereotypes and it prevents that kind of deeper view. And when you start looking out for it, you see it pretty often. And I think it's too bad because I think Stoicism has more to offer.
00:22:04
Speaker
And I would say, yeah, I would say different from brosism in that the smallest stoic is a simplification of the system into one adjective or one caricature. And brosism is connecting stoicism to a specific view of masculinity or specific kind of masculine goal. So those three are kind of misrepresentations. I think they're all interesting. But anything else you want to see on those, Caleb?
00:22:34
Speaker
Yeah, well, I would say that occasionally people use brosism who are not involved in the community also as their way as dismissing stoic thought either because they think it promotes negative masculine ideals or because it's connected with this sort of unfeeling version of stoicism or what they perceive thought to be. So of course there are people who write books like I think the classicist Donna Zuckerberg
00:23:04
Speaker
basically accuses a number of Stoics as promoting a version of rowicism. And in my view, quite unfairly, really, I think even the most popular Stoics, whether it's Ryan Holiday or, of course, Massimo Pelucci and Donald Robertson, don't do this. Don't make these mistakes.
00:23:25
Speaker
So that's I think that that's that's worth mentioning and then the other bit on little s stoicism I would say is just that I'm really not a huge fan of that term just because it doesn't really warrant I think the word stoicism it's almost more of just a different talking about a different thing entirely as opposed to
00:23:44
Speaker
talking about the philosophical school, which includes a vision of what it is to live the good life, not merely this picture of a sort of bovine, unfeeling existence. Yeah, fair. I would say that, yeah, I agree with that. I would be interested in those criticisms of the community as promoting that picture. I mean, one thing,
00:24:14
Speaker
One thing about stoicism that is appealing is kind of its, I don't know, its equality, both across kind of class and across gender. I think it's, I would be hard pressed to think that there's anything about the philosophy itself that lends itself to kind of broey or exclusionary in that kind of sense of the term. Great. Yeah, I think so.
00:24:43
Speaker
I'm going to jump to the next three, which are traditional stoicism, modern stoicism, and academic stoicism.
Modern Stoicism and Psychological Tools
00:24:50
Speaker
And these, I think, are not misrepresentations of stoicism, but different ways of approaching thinking about the philosophy. And so starting with modern stoicism, modern stoicism, I'm not interested to get your view on the scale, but the way I take modern stoicism, this is a movement started maybe in a relatively recent movement,
00:25:12
Speaker
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00:25:31
Speaker
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00:26:00
Speaker
Stoicism itself was always kind of the strange, not always, it was popular in the Renaissance, but post-Renaissance, it was always the weird stepchild to Plato and Aristotle. It was never a core part of the canon.
00:26:18
Speaker
it wasn't respected as the most important, or one of the most important things to come out of antiquity, or if it was, it was certainly many levels below the contribution of Plato and Aristotle. But recently, I would say even in the last 50, 60 years, there's been a real resurgence in interest in the philosophy. And modern Stoicism in particular is part of that resurgence.
00:26:47
Speaker
There's obviously the modern stoicism group. And how I define this group is it's an attempt to, a group or movement that is attempting to modernize stoicism to keep up to date with innovations in science, psychology, neuroscience, and ethics. So in other words, it is to say, look, if we take what's essential about stoicism,
00:27:15
Speaker
Maybe that is, speaking for modern stoics, maybe that's the view that virtue is the only good and that we should live in accordance with our nature. So preserving those things, what should we change now that we know what we know about science? What should we change now that we know what we know about ethics, about human psychology and human neuroscience and things like this? So I think that's what connects all this.
00:27:42
Speaker
Lawrence Becker has his book, A New Stoicism, which attempts to do just this, which is to reconstruct the philosophy from a modern perspective while preserving what he takes to be essential to it. Massimo Pigliucci talks about updating Epictetus, talks about what needs to be changed. So when I look at modern stoicism, I look at it as kind of a wrestling with ancient stoicism and say, look, there's a lot of value here.
00:28:09
Speaker
Let's take what we can. Let's preserve what's essential, but let's throw out what's outdated. Let's throw what doesn't work anymore, or let's throw what we know would be wrong, especially about things like science and physics and things like this. Is that what you take modern socialism to be, or what are your thoughts? Yeah, that seems right to me. I would say that
00:28:32
Speaker
Many people in the modern Stoic movements were brought to Stoicism for reasons that were connected to the Stoic's use as a psychological tool. Not everyone, but many. You have Albert Ellis who invented rational
00:28:53
Speaker
behavioral motive therapy was heavily influenced by the Stoics and that Donald Robertson has done quite a lot of work on that front modernizing stoicism and combining it with cognitive behavioral therapy. You have people like Pierre Hadeau who
00:29:11
Speaker
emphasize the spiritual exercise aspect of stoicism. So a lot of people are very struck by the techniques of stoicism. But what makes I think modern stoic move in, especially special or unique, important, why it plays an important role for so many people today is that it's also promotes a vision of the good life. So it's not just like a modern therapy in a sense of cognitive behavioral therapy, which
00:29:40
Speaker
can be understood just as a set of tools for living better or a framework for living better. Instead, it's positively opinionated on what a good life looks like and that vision is grounded, what people take to be essential in stoic thought. So the most common central claim I would think is the importance of virtue and that
00:30:07
Speaker
Either virtue is the only good or perhaps if it's not the only good, it's the good for which one should never make any sacrifices. It's not the sort of thing that should ever be traded off.
00:30:21
Speaker
So that's how I would describe modern Stoics sort of emergence, if you will, as a lot of interest in the techniques of Stoicism in addition to this view that Stoicism can play a meaningful role in a life and perhaps even fill a vacuum for many people that they've experienced with a loss of religion or a general secularization of the modern world.
00:30:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that view that it's a powerful set of psychological techniques that is not value agnostic.
00:31:02
Speaker
Um, is something that's really important to it. And what I kind of see in, in, so I'd say these aren't just tools, but it's a way of life. And what it means to be a way of life is it means it gives you an answer about this is the wrong way to live. And this is a better, or this is what, this is what a good life looks like. And this is what worse lives look like. And it's okay to stake those kinds of claims and.
00:31:24
Speaker
I think perhaps there's this interesting emergence too as people move away. I think the relationship between stoicism and religion is very interesting, but I've always kind of suspected as people have moved away from having religion serve that function.
00:31:41
Speaker
There's become more space for philosophies as ways of life or more need for overarching value structures to adopt. And I think maybe that has something to do with modern stoves and emergence in the 2000s in this recent time period, as I think more and more people are
00:32:05
Speaker
If not moving away from religion, at least wrestling with their religion and meaningfully engaging with alternatives, especially with the emergence of the internet and the emergence of globalization and this capacity to kind of have this marketplace of ideas.
00:32:22
Speaker
You know, yeah, I'm just struck right now as a tangent of the marketplace of ideas is a metaphor for, you know, an Agora, a literal marketplace, which is what kind of Athens would have been like when people from different areas would have been walking through, talking about it, arguing with each other, debating different philosophies. And now the internet has provided capacity to do that, has provided a capacity to
00:32:44
Speaker
go to modern stoicism conventions, listen to podcasts like this, go on Facebook groups and kind of engage in this rigorous debate about ways to live, which is interesting and meaningful to people. I'm open if you have more to say on that. I wanted to jump into academic stoicism to kind of have it as a foil to modern stoicism, if that works.
Academic vs. Practical Stoicism
00:33:09
Speaker
But did you have anything else? Yeah, let's do that.
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah, so academic stoicism, I'll bring this up as a contrast to modern stoicism. Academic stoicism, I would say, is an attempt to understand stoicism as accurately as possible, but to understand stoicism as a historical artifact, not something to be lived in accordance with.
00:33:34
Speaker
So the value of stoicism is the same value that might come from other kind of historical pieces of knowledge. It has a kind of classical knowledge. It can tell us things about the way we live today. It can teach us about the history of psychology, philosophy, humans' ways of wrestling with their existence, but it is a cultural artifact to be understood, not something to be practiced.
00:34:04
Speaker
academic stoicism is very, very new as well, right? So you mentioned Hadeau. I mean, Hadeau was writing in maybe the 70s, the 80s. He's pretty recent. In the English tradition, Hadeau was French. In the English tradition, you have Anthony Long, A. Long, who's still living
00:34:26
Speaker
but retired, a very, very famous person who kind of pushed the emergence of Hellenistic philosophy. I would say in the early 70s, I think 74 was when he put out one of his best books on stoic philosophy and Hellenistic philosophy. And then after that work of, you know, Hadeau and Anthony Long,
00:34:47
Speaker
You had this real emergence, John Cooper, Julia Annes, Martha Nussbaum, this real emergence of people that were taking Stoicism and Hellenistic philosophy seriously. Because before it was just not treated with the same respect and reverence that Aristotle and Plato had, who were really considered as the people who were
00:35:14
Speaker
making the most valuable contributions to philosophy at the time. But then again, as I say, in the 70s and then the 80s and 90s, you have lots of people starting to, on the back of, I would say, Hado and Anthony Long, have people started treating stoicism seriously as something to be studied. But
00:35:35
Speaker
If you engage with academic stoicism, I have my PhD in stoicism, so I was engaged with academic stoicism. If you engage with academic stoicism from the perspective of a practitioner, it can often be a quite, I don't know, I would say misaligned values. I would say it's a wonderful resource. And I'm incredibly indebted to the people that are doing this work, but often,
00:36:04
Speaker
Often I feel like it can tend to be inert in its value, or at least I would say not maximizing the value. But I also look at it as kind of a process, right? So somebody kind of...
00:36:16
Speaker
The academic Stoics are like the archeologists, right? They go and they dig the stuff out. It's like, you know, we don't want to, not everybody wants to learn Greek, not everybody wants to learn Latin and go in and read fragments of Stoics and try to place these together with other fragments to create a coherent picture. But because somebody has done that, it's like a funnel because somebody has done that.
00:36:41
Speaker
then other people are able to read that work. And then because they're able to read that work, they're able to put it into action. So I would say an immensely valuable thing that's being done, contrast with the modern socialism community. The modern socialism community was saying, wow, look at this amazing resources you're pulling out, these amazing things you're studying, these papers you're publishing. Let's do something with it. Let's put it into life. Let's put it into action.
00:37:09
Speaker
And not, I would say, the break between the two. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, absolutely. The focus of this podcast is on the theory and practice of stoicism. So we care about both important theoretical questions and then the practical aspect of applying whatever it comes out of.
00:37:35
Speaker
Theoretical philosophical inquiry, you know just focusing on theory as inert merely focusing on Practice would be with practice without a direction, you know So there's always the risk that academic
00:37:56
Speaker
stoicism for someone who's interested in both the theory and practice is going to be too far in the theoretical side. And not just that, some of the theoretical questions may be less interesting to people. How does stoic logic differ from Aristotelian logic? It's not this sort of thing. Many modern stoics need to think about or know about unless of course they're interested in the question.
00:38:24
Speaker
But I think one useful frame I have for thinking about a lot of different fields is that if you're inclined to dismiss a field because it seems too academic,
00:38:39
Speaker
I think that's a fine intuition, a fine reaction, or maybe if you have the opposite tendency or inclined to dismiss a whole body of work because it seems too popular or unsophisticated.
00:38:55
Speaker
one should always remember that there's this line that 80% of everything is crap and 20% is excellent. And you should always be looking for that 20% because normally in any group of people, there's going to be some subset of people who are doing excellent work. The sort of thing that would be perhaps quite useful to you for so both my life and heavily influenced by
00:39:23
Speaker
academics on my side, Pierre Hadeau really shaped my reading of the ancient Stoics and his work is excellent. So that's, I think that's the general attitude I would counsel about the academic academics, as it were, is that, you know, there are some excellent works, the popular people who more popular
00:39:48
Speaker
more practical people who do excellent work have been influenced by a number of them. And that's an important fact to keep in mind. Yeah. And I would say to add to that, because you rightly frame that you can go too far in either direction, right?
00:40:12
Speaker
You can raise these kind of questions of, you know, why have you spent so much time studying philosophy if you haven't put it into practice? You know, have you misunderstood philosophy? I always think these things about.
00:40:23
Speaker
I always think there's something peculiar about these ethics professors that get accused of sexually assaulting their students, for example, which has happened more often than I would like to admit for the profession of philosophy. You always think there's something quite peculiar going on there, right? And that's something that the Stoics hit on, something very strange when you know ethics very well in one sense, but you don't put it into practice in another.
00:40:46
Speaker
too much theory can be kind of inert and peculiar in this sense, too much practices without direction, as you pointed out. And when you were talking, though, I was thinking that maybe in terms of what to do with this modern stoicism, academic stoicism, I would say almost this is when you want that Goldilocks solution, that not too hot, not too cold, which is that you've raised this before, Caleb, but if you're the kind of person that tends to
00:41:11
Speaker
focus on practice, complement that with some theory, enrich that with some deeper understanding. If you're kind of the person that kind of tends to focus on logic puzzles or likes the rigorous scholarship, complement that with some practice, complement that with some training. That's the kind of thing that I know Epictetus would counsel when he was working with students.
00:41:38
Speaker
And he often criticizes the students who show off how much Chrysippus they've read or how much text they've memorized. In his view, you've gotten it all wrong. If you end up in that position, you've gotten too far in the way of theory. But as you pointed out, both of us
00:41:59
Speaker
are also heavily, heavily influenced by the people we've read. But yeah, so kind of adding a bit, you know, not too hot, not too cold, calm method that as necessary. The third part that I think is an interesting mix that I wanted to raise, which is something I've been encountering a lot on the internet.
Traditional Elements in Modern Stoicism
00:42:15
Speaker
So we talked about modern stoicism, we talked about academic stoicism. And the third section, I would say is the traditional stoicism movement.
00:42:24
Speaker
And what I define as the traditional stoicism movement is it's a commitment to stoicism, commitment to practicing stoicism, combined with the belief that stoicism only works if we retain, if not all of it, then almost all of its parts, including those parts which might seem peculiar, strange, or bad to a modern reader.
00:42:52
Speaker
And I think the contrast is often between what I would say is the traditional stoicism and the modern stoicism community. And I think that these two communities often argue, I think first and foremost about the stoic conception of God. I think that's like one of the clearest points here to flush out this difference.
00:43:09
Speaker
And the traditional Stoics would say something like, look, we believe in Stoicism as a way of life. We want to practice Stoicism as a way of life. But Stoicism as a way of life only works, only makes sense if you agree in the Stoic, um, pantheistic conception of God as imbuing and, um, manifesting in everything.
00:43:30
Speaker
And the modern Stoics would say, no, I can still practice stoicism even without a stoic conception of God, even if I'm atheistic, for example, even if I don't believe in God, because stoicism is an ethical position about the primacy of virtue and certain tools and skill sets around emotional management, stress management, behavioral management.
00:43:54
Speaker
So I don't need stoic logic to be true. I don't need stoic physics to be true to practice stoicism. And the traditional stoic say, what you're doing doesn't even look like stoicism anymore. You're doing something else. If this was around in ancient Greece, it would be an entirely different school of thought. And I always think those arguments are really interesting. I myself wrestle with where I fall in between the two of those. But what's your thoughts on that?
00:44:20
Speaker
Yeah, I would say that it's always a fun when your movement gets long, large enough to have different schisms. And this has played out in quite a number of different political and religious movements. And there's always the question when there is a schism, is it
00:44:38
Speaker
the sort of thing that is driven by an important consideration or is it the sort of thing where it's a narcissism of small differences, right? And you see both in history where sometimes people, you know, entire countries will split for good reasons and other times maybe not so much. So I think it'd be most useful here to jump into like what is the
00:45:06
Speaker
actual claim that traditional Stoics might mate against many modern Stoics. And what I understood you to be saying is just that there's something about, I think most nearly every modern Stoic would say virtue is primary.
00:45:26
Speaker
The next step that many traditional Stoics may claim is that not only is virtue primary, but you need this idea that the universe is imbued with reason or there's a much deeper
00:45:43
Speaker
logic to things, you know, logos and permeates the most fundamental level of the universe. And without that idea, that's one candidate, you cannot really be a stoic. The other candidate would be that modern stoics haven't
00:46:03
Speaker
understood the idea of indifference, where I think probably a lot of modern Stoics, just thinking something, when they say virtue is the primary good, they think that it's the most good, as opposed to the only thing that is good, which is closer to many of the ancient Stoic's positions. The Stoics themselves argued about this, of course, ancient Stoics, but the dominant Stoic position would have been that
00:46:29
Speaker
No, virtue is the only good and these indifference, some of them are preferred. That just means we would want them more from people given our nature. But it doesn't mean that they are actually good. So those are the two candidates that come to mind for what traditional aesthetics might argue. Would you add anything to that? Yeah, I think that's a good list. I think the thing that I would add
00:46:51
Speaker
is Stoicism was very famous and very intentional in the interconnectedness of its philosophy. It made an argument, the ancient Stoics made an argument that looked, you have to understand
00:47:09
Speaker
you have to understand logic, understood as epistemology, ways of knowing, and you have to understand ethics. You have to understand all three of these. You can't understand any of them in isolation. So I think another thing that traditional stoics would say, the modern stoics have overemphasized ethics. In overemphasizing ethics, they've forgotten about the logic and the physics. So one, that's a mistake. That's something that they shouldn't do.
00:47:39
Speaker
And two, they're very willing to throw away certain parts of the ethics and the physics without understanding the implications those changes, or sorry, the logic in the physics, without understanding the implications those changes have on the ethics. So it's not just that you have to believe in a pantheistic God to be a stoic, it's that if you don't believe in a pantheistic God, you can't get the argument of virtue is the only good.
00:48:09
Speaker
Right? Because then you lose arguments about the benevolent nature of the universe, the benefits of living in accordance with its nature, the idea that we have a function that's grounded in something outside of just biological observation. We have kind of a teleological function grounded in the divine.
00:48:39
Speaker
the, I myself, I, I don't think these things are necessary. I think, I think I tend towards modern stoicism in this sense. Um, but their view would be, you know, not only do you need those things to be stoic, but without those things, you can't even get the ethical positions you want to hold. You can't argue your way to them anymore because all of these things are interconnected. That's what I would add.
00:49:05
Speaker
Yeah, so there's the idea that you need the stoic god, as it were. There's the idea that virtue must be the only good, and then finally, this notion of interconnectedness plays an essential role in the philosophy.
00:49:25
Speaker
All of these seem like important questions to me, but they don't seem like things that would cause me to deny that someone is a stoic. I think at that level, they seem closer to, you know, do you need a stoic God to make an account of virtue? That's an interesting and important philosophical question, but it also sort of seems like
00:49:48
Speaker
the debate a Christian might have, which is like this is the only sense of incarnation that makes sense. And if you don't have some other account of, you know, how Jesus can be incarnated in a human, that your philosophy is not going to work. And someone could say that truthfully. And I don't think that being true would entail that someone is
00:50:12
Speaker
not a Christian in any important sense. I mean, there is a true account. If you're a Christian, of course, there is a true account of the incarnation. And probably the other ones are not going to work. They're going to have serious problems. But that doesn't mean that one needs to believe the true account in order to be a practicing Christian. And I would say the same thing about Stoics, that
00:50:41
Speaker
to me when the views about the Stoic God or whether virtue is the only good or whether it's just the most good don't seem especially central. The last one about the integration of different ideas also seems like
00:50:59
Speaker
plausibly a critique that has important practical upsides and that we should talk about that more, but we don't, you know, is it a plausible critique? Maybe so.
00:51:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a, I think that's, if I guess I was taking a step back, the traditional stoic critique of modern stoicism would be, this is watered down, you're not doing it right. And then you could do that judgmentally and say therefore you're not a real stoic, or you could do it charitably and you could say,
00:51:35
Speaker
You're not doing it right. So you're missing out on a lot of the good stuff. You're missing out on the benefits. You're missing a lot of, a lot of the arguments that make sense and helps you understand stoicism or the coherency of the worldview. Um, and then the flip side, I guess that's what the traditional stoic would say, the modern stoic and then the modern stoic to the traditional stoic might say, well,
00:51:56
Speaker
I don't know, maybe you're being uncharitably, maybe you're being a bit pedantic. You're making a mountain out of a mole Hill. You're, you're creating schisms where they're
Balancing Theory and Practice
00:52:06
Speaker
not necessary. You know, we're all part of the same group, or maybe charitably, they'd say, look, you're, you're getting lost a bit in the theory in a bit. You, you, uh, away from the practice, um, and that focus on.
00:52:22
Speaker
clearly delineating where stoicism starts and ends, clearly delineating who is and who isn't or what is and what isn't. You're losing a lot of the value that could be in the middle ground there. That was my attempt at charitably taking interpretation from each side. Any thoughts on that?
00:52:44
Speaker
Yeah, I would say that if you are wondering whether a question is too pedantic or too theoretical, one heuristic to apply here is that
00:52:59
Speaker
Does the answer to this question, would an answer to this question change my behavior in an important way? So the answer to the question, you know, would a good person consume meat? That question
00:53:22
Speaker
its truth value would cause you to have reasons to consume or not consume meat. That's a sort of simple example. The answer to the question, is virtue the only good or is it just the primary good?
00:53:41
Speaker
And I think just not actually would not change your actions. As the person thinks virtue is the primary good but not the only one, they're likely just going to act in the same way as the person who thinks virtue is in fact the only good.
00:54:01
Speaker
So that strikes me as splitting hairs. And if you're on the more traditional side, that's the challenge I would give to you if you are thinking about some of these other questions. Yeah, because then it becomes...
00:54:15
Speaker
You can ask, you know, yeah, is this a question that's meaningful for my behavior or is this more about me trying to delineate definitions, trying to establish conceptual borders and, um, questions. And then I think rightfully kind of interrogate why you're doing that. Sometimes it's valuable. Sometimes it's not. Um, but yeah, I love that heuristic that makes a lot of sense. I think Epic T.S. of course has the story.
00:54:40
Speaker
It's something to the effect of, you know, I can recite Chrysippus for you and I can compare his views with the views of Antipater. But is that the reason that young men come from their homes to visit my school for these trifling words? One feature that makes words trifling or not is whether they change your behavior.
00:55:04
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I mean, like, like in all things, whatever I'm confused, I just go back to Epic to this. I'll
Conclusion and Tribute to Epictetus
00:55:09
Speaker
just, he'll, he'll shout me into shape. Um, but yeah, that, that, that's it. That's my, that's my, that's my six. I think that was a, um, a youthful, uh, useful discussion. Um, so yeah, thanks for that. A lot of fun. Yeah. Thanks again. So that's another conversation.
00:55:31
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Stoic 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.
00:55:46
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.