A Guide to the Good Life

"That is, as you say, a caricature of Stoicism; but it’s a very common one, and it’s not going to go away anytime soon. The second book that I recommend, William Irvine’s A Guide to the Good Life , deals with this in some detail. There are several chapters in which Irvine goes into these ideas about the Stoics and emotions. The basic idea is this: yes, Stoics do have that reputation, but if you look at what they wrote and the way they actually behaved in life, they were far from emotionless. We have excellent accounts of the lives of ancient Stoics: we know a lot about the Greek Stoics, beginning from Zeno, the founder of the philosophy, through Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers, which includes several mini-biographies of Stoics; and of course we also know a lot about Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca , Musonius Rufus, and others too. We know what these people did, and how they practised their philosophies. There is nothing in any of these biographies or in any of their writings that suggests that they behaved in a Spock-like way and suppressed their emotions in order to think about things rationally. What they did, and they were very explicit about this, was recognise that there are different types of human emotions. The first emotional reaction you have to something, they called an impression. So for instance let’s say that you are walking in the street by yourself at night and you hear a sound that doesn’t feel right. Your first impression, your first reaction might be one of fear, and the Stoics said there’s nothing you can do about that. There are natural reactions, and you cannot and you should not, in fact, suppress them. But what you should do, if it is at all possible, is examine them, step back for a second and say: ‘Why am I afraid? Is there really something to be afraid of, or not?’ If there is something to be afraid of, a real danger, by all means deal with the danger; but a lot of the time the first impression is actually misleading. If you get angry, for instance, at something, think: ‘Why am I getting angry here? Am I being insulted? What is an insult? What is this person who is insulting me trying to tell me? Is there some truth perhaps in what he’s saying? Should I even pay attention to an insult to begin with? Why am I reacting this way?’ The aim was to examine your emotion and to manage or gradually eliminate the negative, destructive ones. The obvious example of a destructive emotion, particularly in Seneca’s writing, was anger. Seneca calls it a ‘temporary madness’. If you do things in anger, you’re very likely going to do things that you regret. I’m so glad you brought that up because indignation at injustice, a sense of injustice, those are positive emotions. The Stoics believed that good character is made of the practice of four fundamental virtues, we call them the cardinal virtues. One of those virtues is justice, and yes, a sense of justice needs to be cultivated because it is a positive emotion. The contrast between anger and justice is exactly this: that anger will cloud your judgement, even if it is justifiable anger, even if there is a good reason to be angry at something. If you react just on the basis of anger, you’re very likely going to make wrong decisions or act rashly; but on the other hand there are situations where you do want to cultivate a sense of indignation, a sense of justice being violated, and you do want to do something about it, and that’s a positive emotion—that’s something that the Stoics would definitely say you should do. I think what you’re getting at there is this separation between academic philosophy and practical philosophy. There was a series of studies a few years ago showing that academic moral philosophers are actually no more moral than the average academic. So there’s solid empirical evidence that that’s the case. The response by many academic philosophers has been: ‘What did you expect?’ But that’s like a mathematician, let’s say, or an economist, who’s caught badly managing his bank account and his personal finances, and who responds when challenged about this incompetence: ‘I’m interested in the theory here, not the practice’. My response would be: well, maybe you should be interested in the practice, to some extent. I find that sort of study very disturbing. As I said before, I came to philosophy late in life, other than my early bout in high school, and I love the field. I’m very happy that I switched and I’m very interested in what I’m doing, but it is disturbing when you hear things like that, especially the rationalisation. You would hope that somebody would think it’s time to do something about this. “It’s a sort of philosophical judo, what Bill practises” One of the things I find interesting about the modern Stoic authors is that those people really do try to live their life that way. They’re not just writing about it; they’re not just theorising about it; they really practise it. Bill Irvine has become an expert, a virtuoso I would say, in dealing with insults, which is one thing that Stoics receive a lot. Let me give you an example: one day he was in his department and he met a colleague who said ‘Oh Bill, hi, I was thinking of citing one of your papers in my book’, and Bill was thinking, ‘Oh, that’s interesting—I’m glad that one of my colleagues thinks my work is worth citing’. But the colleague immediately added ‘Yes, I’m trying to decide on whether your work is just mistaken or downright evil’. Obviously that’s not a compliment. The way that Bill responded was straight out of Epictetus: he almost quoted Epictetus verbatim. He said: ‘Oh, well that’s because you only read one of my papers: if you’d read the other ones you’d see that I’m really evil.’ So he turned things around; that’s exactly what Epictetus did. There is an anecdote in the Discourses where somebody, one of his students, tells him: ‘I heard so-and-so speaking ill of you.’ And Epictetus’ response is: ‘Well, that’s because he doesn’t know me well, because otherwise he would be saying much, much worse things.’ Exactly, it’s a sort of philosophical judo, what Bill practises. As a result, he tells me, he’s been a much happier person, because a lot of things that were stressful for him, like his colleagues not thinking well of his work now just washes over him, and he’s even amused by it. Now, that comes with a caveat, because whenever I tell this kind of story, the objection is: ‘Ah, but that way you run the risk of not actually learning from criticism’. That’s not the point. The point is to ignore the insult, not the criticism. So the intelligent Stoic would react with humour or simply just ignore the insult, but then he or she would go back and think: ‘Why did my colleague object to that paper? What can I learn from that reaction?’ Epictetus is very specific about this, that you should do this, that you should analyse the problem with a calm eye; but what you shouldn’t do is react to the insult, because reacting to an insult is something that is under your control. The insult itself is not, but how you react to it is up to you. You can step back and say, ‘Well this guy is trying to hurt me, I’m not going to let him, I’m just walking away.’ Excellent question. So, here’s the thing, the reason there was a shift between Greek Stoicism and Roman Stoicism. Just briefly, from a historical perspective: Stoicism started in Athens in the year 300, or 301 BCE in a school established by Zeno. It thrived in Athens until the Athenians made what turned out to be a fundamental political mistake siding with Mithridates against the Romans. As a result of that the Roman general Sulla marched on Athens and laid siege to the city, destroying both Mithridates and many of the Greeks. Now, after that event, we are talking about 1st century BCE here, there was no relevant school of philosophy left in Athens. The philosophers left. This is referred to as the ancient philosophy diaspora: the philosophers from different schools went out into different places. Some of them went to Alexandria, some of them went to Rhodes, many of them went to Rome, including most of the Stoics we know from afterwards. This is referred to as the Early Stoa, which is the Greek version, and then the Late Stoa, which is the Roman version—there is also the Middle Stoa, which is the transitional period. No they went of their own accord. They figured out that the heyday of Athens was over and the new power was Rome. So the reason I am telling you this is because it does go back to your question about the purpose of Stoicism, whether it is to live a happy life. For the early Stoics, the emphasis was on what the Greeks called the eudaimonic life. The eudaimonic life, which is often translated as ‘the happy life’, doesn’t really translate very well—it’s more like ‘the flourishing life’. For the Stoics in particular the eudaimonic life was a moral life. It was the kind of life where you are on your deathbed, you look back and you say: ‘Yes, that was worth it: there is not much that I’m ashamed of, that was a life well-lived, not just in the sense that I thrived in terms of material possessions, but mostly I was a good person.’ So that puts the emphasis on the virtues. Externalities, practical goods and things like that, are OK. There is nothing in Stoicism that says you cannot pursue wealth, health, education and all those sorts of things. There was nothing wrong with material possessions, as long as you never, ever traded those for virtue. So if, in order to acquire or attain health, or wealth, or education, you did something that was morally questionable, morally wrong, then you would be doing the wrong thing from a Stoic perspective. That was the view of early Stoics. “There is nothing in Stoicism that says you cannot pursue wealth, health and education” The later Stoics, such as Epictetus, based in Rome, added a second component to this. They retained this fundamental idea that it’s about practising virtue, it’s about having the good moral life, but they also added what they call apatheia, which of course is the Greek root for the English word ‘apathy’, and yet has nothing to do with it. They didn’t counsel apathy. What they did counsel was apatheia . The best way to translate this word is as ‘magnanimity’ or ‘great soul-ness’. So the idea was that you achieved tranquillity in life, you achieved what the Epicureans, who were rivals of the Stoics, called ataraxia or tranquility of mind, if you developed a magnanimous attitude towards the world. That’s why I gave you the example of the way Bill Irvine responds to insults. Bill’s response to insults is magnanimous. If someone insults him he uses humour to deflect the insult, and through this achieves inner calmness. Yes. Funny you should say so. Epictetus says exactly this in the Discourses , he says: ‘I used to go round responding humorously to people and then I got my nose broken.’ And he adds: ‘— so I don’t do it anymore, I just walk away.’"

"I don’t necessarily completely agree with this book. What I like about it is that he writes beautifully and he’s very clear about what he’s doing: He’s trying to revive that notion of philosophy as a guide to life. That’s a really valuable contribution. We live in a culture where science has hegemony. Everybody looks to science ; everyone, in a way, wants to be thought of as like a scientist. Philosophy is no exception. The kind of philosophy that sees itself as a handmaid to science, or as using some of the methods of science, has tended to dominate. So he’s reviving this other tradition. Obviously he’s pushing the philosophy of Stoicism, and I think he does a very good job of making it plausible and attractive. He has to counter the common perception of Stoicism as advocating a rather tedious, boring, self-denying, joyless existence. He shows that it’s really not like that. It’s about deciding on certain values, and the Stoic prioritises the value of mental and emotional tranquillity. He argues that the ancient Stoics were actually very acute psychologists – in many ways they anticipated some of the findings of modern psychology – and they had a lot of insight into human nature. If tranquillity is your goal – and Irvine argues that it’s a worthwhile goal – then the Stoic way of life is pretty plausible. Maybe! Yes, negative visualisation is one of the most memorable of the psychological techniques he talks about. He suggests that as a regular habit, just practise imagining how things might be worse – imagine the loss of loved ones, the loss of your job, that your country is at war, or that you’ve lost your health. He argues that if you practise this, it does pay dividends. This chimes with contemporary psychological research about gratitude. Psychologists have found that if people continually write down things they are grateful for, they do in fact find themselves more content with life. That’s pretty plausible. Since I read the book, I’ve been practising “negative visualisation” on a very small scale. I don’t do it every night, as he recommends, but I do it when I’m in a situation that’s less than desirable. For example, the other week I was stuck with the family in the car, on the New Jersey Turnpike. It was sleeting, we were in a horrendous, endless traffic jam, and we passed a couple of guys with a flat tyre at the side of the road. There we were in the car: We were warm, we were listening to a good audiobook, and I thought, “Well, yes, things could be worse.” It’s a small-scale thing, but it’s certainly better to be thinking like that, rather than just consuming yourself in annoyance, frustration, boredom and anger about the fact that things aren’t the way you’d like them to be. Yes, and there’s Marcus Aurelius. He gets up every morning, and says, “Today the following is going to happen to me: I’m going to be insulted, calumnied, and spat upon.” He starts his day preparing for the worst. Yes, he doesn’t have unreasonable expectations. Whether I want to go all the way with Irvine, I don’t know. But I have a very open mind about the philosophy of Stoicism . I think there’s a lot of wisdom in it. One thing I was impressed by is that although his primary value seems to be tranquillity, the book is called The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy . He really tries to argue against the idea that Stoicism is the same as a certain kind of Buddhism, where you try to completely eliminate desire. He says that if you live the right way, you can achieve more than just the absence of pain. It has that too. A Stoic attitude is certainly accepting things that you can’t change. That’s another big plank of his philosophy, that there is absolutely no point in protesting against what you can’t change, shaking your fist at thunderstorms. Yes, it could be a recipe for enhanced anxiety. You could argue there’s something neurotic about that level of negative visualisation. He’s suggesting doing it as a result of a conscious choice, though, rather than as a symptom of anxiety. One of the areas where I’m very sympathetic to Irvine is where he talks about luxurious living. He mentions people who get too accustomed to the very best food, the very best wine, the very best theatre, the very best music etc, and who come to be unable to appreciate more mundane versions. I think he’s on to a good point there. For example, I live in a college town and we regularly go to see the university theatre productions and the university orchestral performances. Obviously, it’s not the same as going to Carnegie Hall, and I’ve occasionally heard people express rather snobbish attitudes about student performances. But it’s a sad thing not to be able to appreciate art just because it’s not on a par with the very best. You really are better off being able to enjoy things on their own terms. Irvine says: “It’s a good thing to accustom yourself to a little bit of roughness in living, and a little bit of the less than excellent.” I wouldn’t advocate harsh deprivation; but when people become too precious over savouring the excellent, I see that as a limitation rather than a marker of their good taste. I think I’m three-quarters a Stoic. I teach a course here at the university called Tightwaddery, the Good Life on a Dollar a Day . It’s what we call an honours class, a two-credit evening class and it’s both serious and somewhat light-hearted. We read Epicurus, we read Thoreau, we read articles about consumerism and advertising. We also do classes on personal finance, and there’s some jokey classes, like one where the students learn to cut each other’s hair. There’s a banquet at the end of the term, where everybody has to produce a meal very cheaply, from a Depression-era recipe. That aspect of Stoicism, the getting by on little, eschewing unnecessary luxuries, husbanding your resources, that’s definitely me. I’m very averse to spending unnecessary money, although I’ll spend money on the things I value, like travelling… I’m not completely committed to stoicism because there is also something of the Nietzschean in me. Nietzsche was very interested in the Stoics because he himself was something of a Stoic. He lived like one, in a way. But he’s also something of a Romantic. He’s influenced by Goethe’s Faust and believes the finest life is one where you experience the whole gamut of human experience – life as a bit of a rollercoaster. That’s not the Stoic ideal. The Stoic ideal is tranquillity. So in a way I’m torn. I do favour that Stoic ideal, and yet I recognise the appeal of the Faustian or Nietzschean ideal of experiencing the highs and lows."