Zeno's Shipwreck
More than 2,000 years ago, a Phoenician merchant named Zeno of Citium was on board a merchant ship sailing in the Aegean Sea near Athens. The ship encountered a powerful storm and sunk with all of its cargo and many men aboard. But Zeno survived, making it ashore and arriving at Athens.Once he recovered from the shock of this experience, he went to a bookshop, where he listened to the Memorabilia being read aloud. This is a composition written by the Greek statesman and writer Xenophon about the famous Athenian philosopher Socrates.
Zeno was so fascinated that he resolved then and there to study philosophy. He turned to the bookseller and asked, “Where can I find a philosopher?” The bookseller looked out onto the street and said, “There goes one!” The philosopher in question was Crates of Thebes. And Zeno became his student.
After a few years of studying with a number of other teachers, Zeno felt ready to begin his own school of practical philosophy, which became known as Stoicism.
Virtue Ethics
While standard ethics is focused on answering questions about actions (e.g., "Is abortion right or wrong?" or "Is human cloning right or wrong?"), virtue ethics, by contrast, focuses on our character. It asks, "How can I become a better person?" (It focuses on the character traits and virtues that make a person good rather than evaluating isolated actions).Aristotle practically invented the approach of virtue ethics as it is understood in the West today. He thought that a eudaimonic life—that is, a life worth living—is one in which we try to become the best humans we can be. But he also contended that such a life requires many things that are not under our control, such as wealth, education, health, and even beauty.
Epicurus, in contrast, thought that the most important things in life were the pursuit of simple pleasures and the avoidance of pain, both physical and emotional. So, the Epicurean life consists of spending a lot of time with friends, reading and debating, all while accompanied by food and wine[
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Stoic philosophy is founded on one crucial premise and relies on two fundamental pillars to provide practical guidance through one’s life.
The Premise of Stoicism
The premise is to live according to nature.
The Stoics figured that if the problem we’re facing is how to live a life worth living, then we should take seriously what sort of animal human beings actually are (what is our nature). Two ideas, according to the Stoics, are so important that we might want to organize our entire existence around them:
1. We are capable of reason, and
2. We are inherently social animals.
A capacity for reason doesn’t mean that we are always reasonable, of course. And being social doesn’t mean we cannot live in isolation. Instead, it means that we thrive in a social group, pursuing projects that are made possible by the fact that we live in a society.
From these two observations, the Stoics concluded that a life well lived is one in which we deploy reason for the improvement of society. Living according to nature means using our brains, as imperfect as our brains are, to make life on this planet better for everyone, and therefore for ourselves.
The Two Pillars of Stoicism
1. The Four Cardinal Virtues
We can achieve living a life well lived by relying on the two pillars of Stoic philosophy: the four cardinal virtues and the dichotomy of control.
Improving society, according to the Stoics, isn’t something that can be done from the top down—by imposing some kind of utopia on people who might or might not like your view of how things should be run. Instead, the world changes one person at a time, from the bottom up. And the only person you can change is yourself.
This positive personal change comes about by constantly practicing four virtues, or habits. They are: practical wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance.
2) Courage is not just physical but first and foremost moral—the courage to stand up and do the right thing.
3) Justice tells us the right thing to do.
4) Temperance is the notion that we should do things in the right measure, neither overreacting to situations nor failing to do enough to correct things
The second pillar of Stoic philosophy—the dichotomy of control—was famously summarized by the slave-turned-teacher Epictetus at the beginning of his manual for a good life, The Enchiridion. While we can influence our body, property, reputation, and office, ultimately, they’re not under our power. Even the healthiest body can be struck by disease or accident. Your property can be taken away from you for a number of reasons. And your reputation can be ruined through gossip and other people’s malicious intent.
What if your coworker is being harassed by the boss? Practical wisdom tells you that this is a situation where you can intervene. You might not be able to change your boss’s attitude, but you may be able to improve the culture at your workplace and comfort your coworker. Justice, then, lies in standing up to the boss. Courage is what gives you the strength to do it. And temperance keeps your response to the boss within reasonable and useful limits[search_files_v2:1].
In contrast, opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and other things of our own doing might be influenced by others, but they ultimately are our own responsibility. Other people might try to get you to change your judgments and opinions or make you adopt a different set of values, but the buck, so to speak, stops with you[search_files_v2:1].
If you take the dichotomy of control to heart, you’ll change your entire outlook on life. You’ll no longer concern yourself with the outcomes of your decisions but instead with their soundness. The outcome is not up to you, but the decision to do certain things rather than others certainly is. The Roman writer Cicero explained the Stoic position by considering an archer who is trying to hit a target. The archer can decide how assiduously to practice, which arrows and bow to select, and how to care for them. They also control their focus right up the moment they let go of the arrow. But once the arrow leaves the bow, nothing at all is under the archer’s control. A sudden gust of wind might deflect the best shot, or the target—say, an enemy soldier—might suddenly move. Hitting the target is what you’re after, so it’s what you pursue. But success or failure does not, in and of itself, make you a good or bad archer. This means that you should not attach your self-worth to the outcome but only to the attempt. Then, you will achieve what the ancients called ataraxia—the kind of inner tranquility that results from knowing you’ve done everything that was in your power to do
2. The Dichotomy of Control
(The dichotomy of control divides all things in life into two categories: Things within our control and Things outside our control.)What if your coworker is being harassed by the boss? Practical wisdom tells you that this is a situation where you can intervene. You might not be able to change your boss’s attitude, but you may be able to improve the culture at your workplace and comfort your coworker. Justice, then, lies in standing up to the boss. Courage is what gives you the strength to do it. And temperance keeps your response to the boss within reasonable and useful limits[search_files_v2:1].
In contrast, opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and other things of our own doing might be influenced by others, but they ultimately are our own responsibility. Other people might try to get you to change your judgments and opinions or make you adopt a different set of values, but the buck, so to speak, stops with you[search_files_v2:1].
If you take the dichotomy of control to heart, you’ll change your entire outlook on life. You’ll no longer concern yourself with the outcomes of your decisions but instead with their soundness. The outcome is not up to you, but the decision to do certain things rather than others certainly is. The Roman writer Cicero explained the Stoic position by considering an archer who is trying to hit a target. The archer can decide how assiduously to practice, which arrows and bow to select, and how to care for them. They also control their focus right up the moment they let go of the arrow. But once the arrow leaves the bow, nothing at all is under the archer’s control. A sudden gust of wind might deflect the best shot, or the target—say, an enemy soldier—might suddenly move. Hitting the target is what you’re after, so it’s what you pursue. But success or failure does not, in and of itself, make you a good or bad archer. This means that you should not attach your self-worth to the outcome but only to the attempt. Then, you will achieve what the ancients called ataraxia—the kind of inner tranquility that results from knowing you’ve done everything that was in your power to do
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Role Ethics
Another way to understand and practice Stoic philosophy is through what’s known as role ethics. The idea is that we all play a variety of roles in our lives—father, son, mother, daughter, boss, employee, and so forth—and that a life worth living involves balancing those roles in the most harmonious way possible
According to Epictetus, there are fundamentally three kinds of roles:
According to Epictetus, there are fundamentally three kinds of roles:
- our basic role as human beings and members of the human cosmopolis,
- roles that are given to us by circumstances, such as being someone’s daughter or son, and
- roles that we choose for ourselves, such as by having children or being someone’s friend.
The ancient Stoics had a trick to improving our character— the use of role models. They came up with a gallery of real and fictional role models whose virtues they used to straighten our crooked character.
One of the most famous of these was Cato the Younger, who gave his life to oppose what he perceived as the tyranny of the Roman dictator Julius Caesar. Another was the mythical Odysseus, who endured 10 years of hardship and turned down the offer of immortality—twice—in order to come back home to his wife and son. And, of course, there is Socrates, whose philosophy inspired the Stoics, and whose death at the hands of the state made him the first martyr to the cause of wisdom.
Lesson 2: Stoicism From Heraclitus To Thoreau
To help situate Stoicism among its rivals and influencers, this lesson takes a look at the major Hellenistic schools of thought. It then examines Stoicism’s philosophical roots in Socrates and Heraclitus and its evolution through time.Alexander the Great ruthlessly built the largest empire the Western world had ever seen by the
time he was 32. Then came the catastrophe that abruptly quashed his dreams: He died after a night and day of boozy partying with one of his admirals—or perhaps he was poisoned.
time he was 32. Then came the catastrophe that abruptly quashed his dreams: He died after a night and day of boozy partying with one of his admirals—or perhaps he was poisoned.
In September of the year 31 BCE, a decisive naval confrontation took place at Actium, on the western coast of present-day Greece. This was between the forces of Caesar Octavian on one side and Mark Antony and Cleopatra on the other. Octavian won, ending the Roman civil war that had persisted since the death of Julius Caesar some 13 years earlier. Under the name of Caesar Augustus, Octavian became the first Roman emperor.
The timespan bracketed by the death of Alexander and the battle of Actium is known as the Hellenistic period. It saw the sudden flourishing of a number of philosophies, including Epicureanism, Cyrenaism, Cynicism, Peripateticism, Skepticism, and Stoicism. It may be no coincidence that the people of this era were interested in practical philosophy, given that their world had been turned upside down by events they had no hope of influencing, let alone controlling.
HELLENISTIC SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge—or episteme for the Stoics—results from the understanding of a systemic web of knowledge, or how everything is connected to everything else. It is not solely the result of perceiving
individual facts and arriving at right judgments about those facts. In a sense, the Stoics were empiricists. They thought that human knowledge ultimately is rooted in sensory experience. But empirical
data through sense impressions is only part of the story, as our judgment plays a major role in forming opinions. Knowledge in the strict sense, moreover, is arrived at only when someone puts together sensorial experience, sound judgments, and a comprehensive understanding of the nature of the world.
HELLENISTIC SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
Lesson 3: The Stoic Garden: Physics, Ethics, Logic
THE STOIC GARDEN
The metaphorical stoic garden was written about by the ancient 3rd century CE biographer Diogenes Laërtius and attributed to Zeno of Citium.
Imagine tending a garden whose fruits you deem to be precious. At the very minimum, you would need a sturdy fence to keep out weeds and animals as well as fertile soil to grow beautiful flowers and nutritious fruits. That’s more or less the way the ancient Stoics thought of how to live the good life,
using a number of metaphors to get their point across.
The fruit in this metaphorical garden are ethics. Ethics was nothing less than the study of how best to live one’s life. In addition to the ability to arrive at judgments concerning right and wrong, this encompassed ideas like what your goals in life should be and how you should relate to other people.
The fertile soil is physics, which encompassed science, metaphysics, and theology. To study physics, in other words, meant to try to get a grasp on how the world works. This is important, according to the Stoics, because if we embrace the wrong metaphysics, we’ll be likely to mis-live, since we would be living as if the world were different from what it is.
The fence surrounding the garden is good thinking, or logic. Logic encompassed anything having to do with better reasoning, including formal logic but also cognitive science, rhetoric, and epistemology
ARISTOTELIAN LOGIC
STOIC LOGIC
STOIC EPISTEMOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY
The Stoics also developed a tightly integrated epistemology—or theory of knowledge—and psychology as part of their broader conception of logic. Their psychology was pressed in the service of accounting for how we arrive at decisions and why so often our decisions are based on incorrect judgments about the world.
A story found in Attic Nights, a book written by Aulus Gellius in the 2nd century, shows how Stoic epistemology and psychology are intertwined. Gellius speaks of a Stoic philosopher who has embarked on a sea voyage. Suddenly, a fearsome storm breaks out, and the philosopher goes pale, like every other passenger on the ship.
When the storm is over, Gellius asks the philosopher why he reacted to the danger in the same manner that everyone else did, since the Stoics say that the only truly bad thing is unvirtuous behavior. External events, like a storm at sea, are neutral—neither good nor bad. They just are.
The Stoic replies by getting out a copy of the fifth book of Epictetus’s Discourses,* which explains the Stoic concept of impressions. An impression is the initial judgment we have of a sense perception. For
instance, you see that a storm is battering the ship, and your impression may be expressed propositionally as “there is a storm out there, and this is a bad thing.”
The impression, then, is made of two components: the sensorial input, as in the case of seeing the storm in front of your eyes, and an immediate judgment—that the storm is a bad thing. As a result of these
two components, your first reaction is automatic: You experience the physiological symptoms of fear.
But if you’ve trained yourself well as a Stoic, you can then gain what modern psychologists would call some cognitive distance from the automatic judgment. There is indeed a storm out there, but it doesn’t
follow that this is bad. The storm just is. Any additional judgment needs to be examined and may very well be unwarranted.
The Stoic philosopher explained to Gellius that he—like any other human being—could not control the first motion of his soul, which is why he went pale. But then he examined the impression and said to
himself: There is a storm out there, but since the storm does not affect my virtue, it is neither good nor bad. As a result, he was at peace with whatever would happen next.
This story implies that emotions are really two things. Take fear, for instance. There is the first movement, or the automatic physiological reaction to a perceived danger. This becomes a full-fledged emotion only once we add—implicitly or explicitly—a cognitive judgment: Not only do you feel afraid, but you really should be afraid, because something bad is happening to you!
This gives us the most powerful weapon in the Stoic arsenal. While the automatic reaction is not under our control, the cognitive component is. Therefore, we can challenge our own thoughts and train ourselves not to give in to irrational or damaging impressions.
*Note:
From my reading it appears that there is a distinction between impressions (phantasia) and first movements of the soul (propatheia). Massimo treats them as one in the same above but impressions are just the raw sensory or mental data entering your mind. This could come from external events, memory or imagination. First movements are the involuntary physical or psychological reflex caused by an impression. Since propatheia is involuntary and tied to phantasia, it makes sense to simplify this into a single thing.
The Stoic Chain of Progression:
External Event/Memory/Imagination -> Phantasia/Impressions (Mental Picture) -> Propatheia/First Movements of the Soul (Involuntary Body Reflex) ->The Pause / Evaluation -> Syncathesis (Rational Assent or Rejection) -> Action or Peace of Mind.
Knowledge—or episteme for the Stoics—results from the understanding of a systemic web of knowledge, or how everything is connected to everything else. It is not solely the result of perceiving
individual facts and arriving at right judgments about those facts. In a sense, the Stoics were empiricists. They thought that human knowledge ultimately is rooted in sensory experience. But empirical
data through sense impressions is only part of the story, as our judgment plays a major role in forming opinions. Knowledge in the strict sense, moreover, is arrived at only when someone puts together sensorial experience, sound judgments, and a comprehensive understanding of the nature of the world.
The Stoics also acknowledged the existence of something we might call natural dispositions. Human beings, according to Epictetus, are naturally inclined to what the Stoics called virtue and what we would today characterize as pro-social behavior. This means that our notion of what is good begins with some innate disposition to interact constructively with other people, usually our caretakers.
Later on, experience refines this disposition, as we learn from the feedback we get from others when growing up. Finally, the use of reason allows us to make one more leap and consider abstract notions such as virtue, as well as to appreciate the fact that all human beings are fundamentally the same. That means that someone living on the other side of the planet has the same needs and wants, and should be accorded the same respect and dignity, as your friends and family.
Lesson 4: How Stoics Understand Providence
DESIRE
❚ The Stoics believed that a great deal of our fears, anxieties, and general stress in life comes from having the wrong priorities. We think we ought to make money, become famous, and keep ourselves healthy forever. The problem is that none of this ultimately is under our control.
❚ What, then, is under our control? First, our considered judgment, or the sort of judgment about things and people that we arrive at after reflection; second, our explicitly endorsed (as opposed to subconscious) values; and third, our deliberate decisions to act or not to act. Nothing else.
❚ The distinction between things that are and are not up to us is called the dichotomy of control, and it plays a central role in Epictetus’s vision of Stoicism. The discipline of desire aims to internalize the dichotomy of control and to reorient our desires away from external things that we do not control. Instead, it directs our attention toward the internal things that we do control.
❚ If we succeed at applying the discipline of desire, the reward is a lofty one: a life without anxiety or stress, where we are secure in the knowledge that we have done all we could, and an understanding that sometimes we win and sometimes we lose—and that’s OK.
THE COSMIC ORGANISM
The ancient Stoics were pantheists: They believed that God is intrinsic to—and inherent in—the world around us. Stated otherwise, they believed that the entire universe is a living organism endowed with
reason, or logos. And they referred to this living organism interchangeably as God or Nature. If the universe itself is God, then we are bits and pieces of God, and we, too, are endowed with logos, since we are capable of reason.
The Stoic understanding of Providence is very different from that found in the Christian tradition. For Christians, Providence is whatever God decrees will happen, according to his plans. These plans are inscrutable to mere mortals but nevertheless take mortals into account because God loves us.
The Stoics, in contrast, thought of our relationship with the cosmos as one of part-to-whole. If an organism needs to cross a muddy path in order to get where it’s going, it is the foot’s duty to get into the mud, however much it may dislike the experience.
The crossing of the muddy path isn’t something that happens for the benefit of the foot but for that of the organism. The only good thing from the point of view of the foot—if it could reason—is that it
would appreciate that it’s doing something good in the greater scheme of things.
The view of the cosmos as an organism was common in antiquity, but it was first replaced by the Christian metaphysical understanding of the world and eventually by the mechanistic philosophy
that underlies the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries. With the work of Galileo and Newton, science began to think of the universe as a machine that works by following the eternal laws
of nature. That view, in turn, got upset by modern conceptions arising from Einstein’s
theory of general relativity and from quantum mechanics. Our current best bet to articulate
a coherent metaphysical view of reality is that—as the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus put it—everything changes. Contemporary metaphysicians and fundamental physicists suggest there are no stable things in the world, only processes that change temporary configurations of matter into other temporary configurations
MATERIALISM
The Stoics were materialists in the sense that they thought everything that exists is made of stuff, or what today we call matter. God falls in that category as well, since it is the same thing as the universe itself. The soul also is material and likely does not persist after we die but rather is recycled into the cosmos, just like the stuff that constitutes our bodies.
Even mental events are material things for the Stoics. Consider, for instance, what they called impressions: mental events that can be triggered by the perception of an external object or by internal mental processes.
An example of a perception-based impression would be your conclusion that it would be good to have some of that chocolate gelato you’ve just seen in the window of a shop. Conversely, an internally generated impression would be the thought that the square root of nine is three. In both cases, according to the Stoics, your soul is being physically imprinted with an impression. Today, we would say that a mental event is instantiated by a particular chemical or electrical stimulation in the brain. And, of course, we do think that the brain, chemical substances, and electrical impulses are made of matter or
energy. Since energy is just another form of matter, we agree that mental events are material in nature.
Even if we agree that thoughts are made possible by material substances, such as our brains, clearly some things are immaterial. We tend to think that the highest metaphysical category is existence: Things either exist or they don’t. Gelato exists, but mathematical concepts present a problem. The square root of nine is an immaterial concept, not a physical object.
According to some modern metaphysicians and philosophers of mathematics, mathematical concepts do exist independently of our thinking about them. This view is called mathematical Platonism, and it holds that mathematicians do not invent concepts but rather discover them. It’s analogous, in a way, to how astronomers discover planets. Another group of metaphysicians and philosophers of mathematics, by contrast, thinks that mathematical concepts are human inventions.
The Stoics provided a different view. They denied that existence is the highest metaphysical category. That privilege belongs to something they called ti in Greek, which roughly translates as “reality.” Reality, in turn, consists of the somata (corporeals) and the asomata (incorporeals).
The incorporeals do not exist but nonetheless are part of reality—like mathematical objects, for instance. Incorporeals have to be real, otherwise they could not be the object of thought. But they cannot exist, because they are not made of stuff.
Note:
If I understand correctly, things that exists are the same as corporeal things.
CAUSE-EFFECT
How do we know if something belongs to the category of corporeals or incorporeals? That’s where the concept of universal cause-effect comes into play. The ancient Stoics thought that the only things that can properly be said to exist are those that have the power to act causally on other things.
Thoughts do have power, since they can bring about action. For instance, in the case of the gelato, you might decide to go into the shop and buy some. The gelato itself has causal powers: It can cause a pleasurable sensation when you eat it. But the square root of nine does not have causal powers. That’s why it doesn’t exist, though it is real, since we can think it.
Understood this way, exist takes on two different meanings. For this reason, the Stoics came up with two different terms for what constitutes reality: things that exist and things that subsist.*
The Stoics thought that cause-effect relations permeate the cosmos, affecting everything. They distinguished between different kinds of causes, or different degrees of causality. There are, for instance,
universal causes, like the laws of nature that move the entire cosmos. Then there are more local causes that affect only a small portion of the cosmic web. The universe will go on as before regardless of whether you buy the gelato or not.
There are also co-causes. If you walk past a gelato shop and decide to buy a cone, there must have been additional co-causes—plenty of people walk in front of gelato displays without automatically buying some. You might have passed by the shop because you’re taking a different route home than normal due to a strike affecting the subway system. Or you might have been feeling a bit down that day because of something that happened at work, so you yielded to the temptation of chocolate gelato more readily than you would have otherwise.
All of these are co-causes that result in you eating gelato. Some are external to you, like the strike that made it impossible to use the subway. Some are internal, like the propensity to seek comfort food when upset.
DETERMINISM
The Stoic logician Chrysippus came up with the notion that there are universal and local causes as
well as a number of co-causes. And he realized that this distinction between internal and external causes is crucial to make sense of the human power of volition: our ability to arrive at judgments and make decisions.
You’ve likely heard of this concept under the misleading term free will. This refers to the notion—rooted in Christian theology—that our will can be contracausal, or independent of external causes.**
If we agree with the Stoics—and with modern physics—that everything has a cause, then the
ability to make decisions independently of external causes is a violation of the laws of nature.
Chrysippus used an interesting analogy to explain the Stoic position on volition. He started from the notion that if everything is caused by something else, then we live in what modern metaphysicians call
a deterministic universe. Causes determine effects, and effects are determined by causes.
To make sense of this, Chrysippus invited us to consider a cylinder resting on a flat surface. If you push the cylinder, it will roll. If asked why the cylinder is rolling, you might be tempted to answer, “because
I pushed it.” But that’s only part of the story. The cylinder also rolled because it’s in the nature of cylinders to roll. Had it been a cube, it would have flipped, or stayed still, but not rolled. So the rolling of the cylinder is co-caused by an external event—the push—and by the internal constitution of the cylinder itself.
STOIC PHYSICS AND MODERN SCIENCE
For all their agreement, there are some tensions between the Stoics’ view of the cosmos and the modern scientific take. The contemporary scientific outlook accepts the notions of materialism, universal causeeffect, and determinism, but there are some caveats. A bigger divergence concerns the Stoic idea that the cosmos is a living organism endowed with reason, something that seems to be entirely at odds with modern science.
Lesson 5: Using Stoic Ethics To Achieve Happiness
Lesson 6: The Stoics on Desire and Discipline
According to Epictetus, a moral and serene life is attained if we train ourselves in three
disciplines. The first, and the focus of this lesson, is learning to desire what is good for us and to be averse to what is bad for us. This lesson describes seven exercises on training our desires and aversions.
Dichotomy of Control Exercise
The first exercise is about discovering what really is—and is not—up to us. Epictetus reminds us that what is truly up to us is limited to our deliberate thoughts, our decisions to act, and our endorsed values.
Among the things that are not up to us are external goods, from the health of our body to our reputation, wealth, and success in love or career. We can certainly influence such things, but we do not determine them.
Exercise
To turn this insight into a regular exercise for everyday life, end the day by thinking over something important that happened to you that day. Do this before retiring for the evening. For instance, you may focus on a job review with your boss.
Then, open up a blank page and divide it into two sections. On the left, list all the things pertinent to that event that were under your complete control. On the right, list all the things that were not under your control.
In the case of the job review, some of the things up to you could include showing up on time, valuing your boss’s opinion and feedback, desiring to have a productive meeting, and whatever nervous thoughts you consciously told yourself.
Some things that were not up to you could include showing up on time (since you might have run into traffic or public transport delays), your boss’s opinion and feedback, actually meeting expectations, having a constructive meeting, and any automatic nervous thoughts that entered your mind.
The point of the exercise is to carefully and methodically apply Epictetus’s distinction between what is and is not up to you and gradually redirect your attention away from external outcomes and toward internal intentions. If you succeed, not only will you be more serene, but statistically speaking, you will be more likely to achieve those desired outcomes.
CHARITABLE ATTITUDE EXERCISE
The Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius reminds us that we are imperfect and that we act—at
least some of the time—from a misguided view of things. What we find blindingly obvious today we might have had trouble grasping in the past.
So, why not extend a courtesy to others and treat their misguided beliefs with charity? Perhaps we can persuade others to see things from a better perspective. And if not, maybe we can endure their lack of wisdom more easily if we keep in mind that we could be in their place instead.
Exercise
For this exercise, reflect on someone whose behavior has annoyed you. Get a pen and paper and answer the following prompts as honestly and clearly as possible:
-What did the person do to annoy you?
-Why do you feel this amounts to a wrong against you?
-Why do you think they acted the way they did? What were they
assuming to be true about the world that you think is incorrect?
-Have you ever held similar assumptions about the world or engaged
in similar behaviors? If so, make a list.
The goal of the exercise is to gradually develop a more charitable attitude toward what you perceive as other people’s mistakes. That, in turn, should lead you toward less frustration and a more constructive approach to these kinds of interactions.
SELF-DEPRIVATION EXERCISE
Modern Stoics engage in a number of exercises of mild self-deprivation as a way to remind ourselves to be thankful for what we might take for granted and to reset what modern psychologists call the hedonic treadmill.
The hedonic treadmill is the notion that we get used to new and exciting things. When this happens, we abandon the old and seek new thrills, only to find ourselves in the same psychological predicament shortly thereafter. One way to reset the hedonic treadmill is to purposefully deprive ourselves of certain things for a short period of time so that we might appreciate them anew.
Exercises
There are many self-deprivation exercises. Here are a few examples that this course’s presenter practices.
❙ At least once a week, fast and abstain from alcohol. The next meal and sip of wine will be even more enjoyable after a day or two of abstaining.
❙ Take a cold shower. Keep in mind that hot water on demand was not available to most people throughout history and is still missing, or rare, in some parts of the world.
❙ Occasionally go out in the cold or rain while underdressed for inclement weather. This reminds you that there are plenty of people who cannot afford a proper coat and that perhaps you can do something to ameliorate their situation.
❙ Select a week every month when you will buy nothing other than basic necessities, such as food and toilet paper. Write down the specific parameters you’ve chosen, listing what you will do without, for how long, and according to what schedule.
The point is not to engage in self-flagellation but rather to engrain the notion that we can do without a lot of things we might have come to psychologically depend on. By doing so, we also nurture gratitude for the presence of things that make our lives more pleasant.
PERSPECTIVE EXERCISE
The fourth exercise involves putting our troubles into a broader perspective and seeing them as less overwhelming than they might at first appear to be.
Exercise
There are three approaches to this practice. In each one, begin by choosing a quiet spot and a moment without distraction. Close your eyes and conjure one of the three following scenarios.
❙ In the first, think of your present moment and begin a journey into the past. Zoom back a few decades to some specific event. Then move further back a few centuries, and then toward the beginning of human history, until you reach prehistory. Now, bring your mind back to whatever was troubling you today. Do you still think it matters that much in the big scheme of things?
❙ In the second approach, put things in perspective by zooming out in space rather than in time. Begin by visualizing yourself in your current surroundings, then slowly move upward, looking at your building, your city, and finally the entire planet. Visualize the entire solar system, then the galaxy, and beyond. Now, quickly bring your mind back to contemplate your immediate problem. Does it still loom
so large once you’ve examined things on a cosmic scale?
❙ Finally, think about your current problem—say, a job interview coming up—and compare it with other things people have had to face throughout history. Think about those who have been diagnosed
with a terminal illness, or lost a loved one, or experienced war and destruction. Are you sure your job interview is that big of a deal?
Doing this sort of exercise isn’t meant to belittle your problems. But it helps to put things into a broader context—temporally, spatially, or by comparison with other people’s problems—to see your issue realistically and not be overwhelmed by it.
CONNECTING WITH NATURE EXERCISE
The fifth exercise aims at reconnecting us with nature and nurturing an understanding of the fact that we are inextricably connected to the cosmic web of cause and effect. In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote:
"The Pythagoreans bid us every morning lift our eyes to heaven, to meditate upon the heavenly bodies pursuing their everlasting round—their order, their purity, their nakedness. For no star wears a veil."
Exercise
❚ Every once in a while, remember to check the weather forecast for the following morning and, if it’s clear, set your alarm clock so that you can get out of bed before dawn and head to a spot that has a good view of the sunrise.
Get there with plenty of time to spare and with a cup of coffee and the passage of Meditations in hand. All you need to do is stand or sit there quietly and absorb the moment. After the sun has risen, reread the
passage and then begin your day refreshed by a renewed acquaintance with nature.
Your imagination is the limit in terms of possible variants of this exercise. You could, for instance, spend a late evening looking at the starry sky, trying to spot meteorites, or engage purposefully in any other activity that has to do with nature, like hiking or kayaking. The important thing is to do it not just for recreational purposes but specifically as a meditation on your personal connection with nature.
LABELING EXERCISE
The Stoics thought that there is only one thing that is truly good for us: our virtue, or our ability to arrive at correct, morally acceptable judgments. Conversely, there is only one thing that truly deserves to be called bad: our vice, which manifests itself any time we arrive at an incorrect, morally problematic judgment.
Everything else might have practical value—in which case it is labelled a preferred indifferent—or practical disvalue—in which case it is called a dispreferred indifferent. Indifferents are not things that we don’t care about but rather things that in themselves do not make us better or worse human beings. They are, in other words, morally neutral.
Today, we use the words good and bad liberally, attaching them to anything and everything: That was a good dinner! That was a really bad soccer game! So, this exercise consists of going through an entire
day—or, better yet, an entire week—without using the words good and bad for anything other than your own judgments.
It comes so naturally to apply good or bad to almost everything, no matter how trivial, that you will catch yourself doing so a number of times. The underlying motive for this exercise is to reshape the way we automatically think about things, making us more parsimonious about applying labels
to events, situations, and people.
EATING EXERCISE
❚ Eating, although fundamental for our survival and conducive to social intercourse, is a perfect time to exercise one of the four Stoic virtues: temperance. In practice, this means that every time you sit at the table, you should ask yourself the following:
❙ Am I eating more than is good for me?
❙ Am I eating too quickly, without savoring the food?
❙ Am I eating unhealthy foods?
❙ Am I serving my guests the same food, in the same portions, as myself?
❙ Is this a good time for a meal, or is there something more important
I should be doing instead?
Going through these questions will not only make you a better Stoic; you’ll likely also be healthier and more welcome among your friends.
Lesson 8: The Stoics on Decision-Making
Lesson 14: Epictetus on Desire, Action, And Judgement
Epictetus employed the three disciplines of desire, action, and assent as a framework through which to lead a more meaningful life. The goal is to redirect our priorities, to guide us in how to act toward others, and to refine our ability to arrive at correct judgments. Together, the three disciplines train
us to live like Stoics.
❚ The Stoics believed that a great deal of our fears, anxieties, and general stress in life comes from having the wrong priorities. We think we ought to make money, become famous, and keep ourselves healthy forever. The problem is that none of this ultimately is under our control.
❚ What, then, is under our control? First, our considered judgment, or the sort of judgment about things and people that we arrive at after reflection; second, our explicitly endorsed (as opposed to subconscious) values; and third, our deliberate decisions to act or not to act. Nothing else.
❚ The distinction between things that are and are not up to us is called the dichotomy of control, and it plays a central role in Epictetus’s vision of Stoicism. The discipline of desire aims to internalize the dichotomy of control and to reorient our desires away from external things that we do not control. Instead, it directs our attention toward the internal things that we do control.
❚ If we succeed at applying the discipline of desire, the reward is a lofty one: a life without anxiety or stress, where we are secure in the knowledge that we have done all we could, and an understanding that sometimes we win and sometimes we lose—and that’s OK.
ACTION
❚ Once we’ve set our priorities straight and we’ve retrained ourselves to
desire what we ought to, as opposed to what other people tell us we
should, we can turn our attention to the second discipline: action.
❚ We live in a world populated by others who depend on us, and who we
depend on in turn. It’s important to reflect on how we should interact
with them.
❚ The Stoic take is that we should treat other people the way we would
like to be treated ourselves: with fairness. Here, we need to remember
that even when people make mistakes, they are still capable of reason
and learning, and they are fellow human beings.
❚ Compassion, rather than criticism or berating, is the preferable approach.
Besides, aren’t we fallible ourselves? Do we never make mistakes? And
when we do, don’t we prefer when people are forgiving and helpful rather
than critical and dismissive?
❚ The discipline of action empowers us to be as understanding of others
as we wish them to be of us.
