A New Stoicism

"Lawrence Becker is a retired philosophy professor. The first time I encountered A New Stoicism was in the context of a book group discussion in New York. It’s quite a difficult book to read in some ways; if you don’t have a certain amount of background in philosophy, you’re probably not going to get as much out of it as you should, although Becker himself is aware of this. The book is structured so that at the end of each chapter there is a commentary, and the commentary is very technical and is where he goes back to the original sources and says things like, ‘I made this point in the chapter because it’s relevant to these other thinkers, these other quotations’. It’s very academic in that sense. But the main sections of each chapter can be read, can be understood, by somebody with little or no background in philosophy. “Becker wants to explore how much Stoicism can be updated to be compatible with modern science, with modern philosophy” One slightly odd feature of the book is that when he writes about Stoics, he writes in the first person plural. So he says ‘we’ do certain things, or this is something that happened to ‘us’. He reminds the reader throughout that he is a Stoic, not just a scholar of Stoic philosophy. The reason it’s called A New Stoicism is because unlike, for example, the Buddhist tradition, or even the Christian tradition, Stoicism was interrupted by the fall of the Roman Empire. The golden years for Stoic philosophy was five centuries, give or take, from 300 BCE to the second century. The last major Stoic was Marcus Aurelius. Stoicism as a philosophy kept on in the Roman Empire for a little longer, but then eventually, the Byzantine emperor Justinian closed down the last philosophical school and basically imposed Christianity on everybody. That was the end of all Hellenistic philosophy, not just Stoicism. For many centuries there was no school of Stoicism, no practice, there was no theory going on. Becker’s point is that there is a resurgence of Stoicism in modern times, that there are people interested in Stoicism as both theory and especially as practice. Becker is interested in updating Stoic philosophy for today. We now have sophisticated cognitive sciences, logic, and so on, and he wants to explore how much Stoicism can be updated to be compatible with modern science, with modern philosophy, and still be called Stoicism. His answer, of course, is ‘yes’, and I tend to agree. He updates a number of aspects of Stoic philosophy. So, let me give you just one example to give you a flavour: remember we started out this conversation by talking about Epictetus’ dichotomy of control—some things are up to me; some things are not up to me. Now, Epictetus and the ancient Stoics had a somewhat optimistic view of what is up to us, as it turns out, because of course a lot of modern cognitive science tells us that much human thinking is not conscious, and that a lot of the time we engage in rationalising about things more than in proper rational thinking. Exactly. Becker takes that into account and says, ‘Look, we need to understand that even the dichotomy of control has to be revised and updated as it turns out there are fewer things that are completely under our control.’ If you were to go with the most extreme view that I’ve seen coming from cognitive science, which is the idea that conscious thinking is entirely an illusion, it’s all about rationalisations, then Stoicism would collapse. Yes, and not only that, but science itself would be threatened, because then I could just turn the table and say, ‘Oh, you cognitive scientists, you think that you’re the only ones not rationalising’ and the whole damn thing collapses. Becker doesn’t go that far, fortunately. And I don’t either. His idea is that you need to take seriously the findings of cognitive science, and update some things, and have a more modest view of human rationality; but as long as there’s a core of your rationality, as long as it’s possible for human beings to think rationally and engage in the kind of reflective exercises that Epictetus was teaching to his students, then an updated version of Stoicism is possible and desirable. That’s the sort of project Becker is engaged in. I also want to say something about Becker himself as a man. I met him through a common friend, and this common friend told me stories about Larry that put everything in a different perspective for me. Before I met him, I thought of him as just the author of an academic book on Stoicism. Well, it turns out Larry was hit by polio when he was young, and this crippled him, and for three years he was in rehabilitation. He completely lost the use of both legs and arms. Then, eventually, he recovered the use of his legs to some extent, though never his arms or hands; and then for several years he has been living in a wheelchair. Despite this, he had a successful career as a university professor, and would grade his students’ papers by writing with his foot. In fact his foot writing was much neater than my friends’ handwriting, apparently. Becker had a dedication to his students and to his career and didn’t allow his physical problems to stand in his way. For me this made it clear that he had lived the philosophy of Stoicism—talk about having no control over external circumstances! When I met him, I did a long interview with him and we discussed his experience in life and how it related to his Stoicism. Yes, I think we do. People like Larry Baker and James Stockdale are obviously fascinating because they show you just how much a human being can actually deal with. But most of our lives do present us with challenges, even minor challenges, for which I think Stoicism is perfectly appropriate. Let me give you an example, I have a very good friend, who is both a practising Stoic and a practising Buddhist. He says Stoicism has helped him cope with moderate inconveniences, like getting on the subway in the morning to go to work in New York City and having to deal with the obnoxious behaviour of some people. He told me: ‘It used to be that I got irritated, it used to be that I started my day miserably because of somebody doing something obnoxious on the subway, but once I started practising these things and sort of readjusting my mental expectations, I just saw these things as the kind of behaviour that really cannot touch me.’ Well, it is in this sense. One of the reasons Stoicism came back in modern times is because these ‘tricks’ are useful. Some of them have been elaborated into fully-fledged psychotherapeutic approaches, such as Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy; cognitive behavioural therapy; Albert Ellis’ rational emotive behaviour therapy, and others. All of these therapies bear traces of Stoicism. Ellis and Frankl both read the Stoics and used their ideas as a starting point. So in some sense, yes, it’s a bag of psychological tricks—but the reason it’s a philosophy is because this bag of tricks is put into a more general context and framework, and this is the idea that the good life is the moral life, and that the moral life is the life where you practise the four fundamental virtues: temperance, justice, courage, and wisdom. End of 2016 interview ————————— Update, 2020 It’s hard to tell for sure, of course. Someone should do a sociology thesis on this! My guess is that it has to do with a combination of factors. First off, Stoicism is a solid philosophy of life, analogous to, say, Buddhism , Daoism, and Confucianism. So it is no surprise that at a time when mainstream religion is losing its appeal, people turn to secular or at least theologically neutral approaches to living a good life. Second, Stoicism originated and became popular — back during the Hellenistic period — at a time of turmoil, where society was changing in dramatic ways, and people felt they had no control over what was happening. This is the situation we are living in now, in the second decade of the 21st century. Although our focus currently is on a pandemic, we shouldn’t forget that we still face the possibility of climate collapse, are under the constant threat of nuclear Armageddon, and we keep experiencing dramatic political upheavals and civil unrest. People need some sort of ethical compass to live and perhaps even thrive through these sorts of things. Third, for all the negative comments we can rattle out about social media, they are making it much easier to discover new ideas and especially to share them with others. The major Stoic interest group on Facebook now has over 82,000 members, and a number of other such groups have sprung up either for people interested in practising Stoicism locally (Italy, France, Portugal, Brazil, India, etc.), or for those wishing to pursue particular aspects or applications of the philosophy (Stoicism and the military, politically progressive Stoicism, and of course Stoic dating!). Finally, there has been the deliberate, concerted effort of a relatively small number of people, largely coalescing around two organizations: Modern Stoicism and the Stoic Fellowship . The first group organizes the annual Stoic Week and Stoicon events, and has been fostering a number of local, smaller “Stoicon-X” gatherings; the second one has the goal of helping people create local “Stoas,” connecting in person, as much as it is currently possible because of Covid, of course."