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Don't Be Stoic: Roman Stoicism’s origins show its perniciousness

by Schwolop on 6/16/22, 3:07 AM with 28 comments

  • by pushcx on 6/16/22, 3:44 AM

    This article ends with its thesis:

    > Because if you accept your fate joyfully, as a Stoic sage should, you’ll never try to change it.

    This is a common criticism. To pick one of many convenient rebuttals, here's William Irvine's book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, chapter 5:

    > To the contrary, they were fully engaged in daily life. From this, one of two conclusions follows: Either the Stoics were hypocrites who did not act in accordance with their principles, or we have, in the above argument, somehow misinterpreted Stoic principles. I shall now argue for this second alternative.

    > Remember that among the things over which we have complete control are the goals we set for ourselves. I think that when a Stoic concerns himself with things over which he has some but not complete control, such as winning a tennis match, he will be very careful about the goals he sets for himself. In particular, he will be careful to set internal rather than external goals. Thus, his goal in playing tennis will not be to win a match (something external, over which he has only partial control) but to play to the best of his ability in the match (something internal, over which he has complete control). By choosing this goal, he will spare himself frustration or disappointment should he lose the match: Since it was not his goal to win the match, he will not have failed to attain his goal, as long as he played his best. His tranquility will not be disrupted.

  • by dnissley on 6/16/22, 3:47 AM

    Meh, seems like it attacks the usual stoic strawman of it boiling down to simply being unemotional.

    That's not my own takeaway of stoicism. At the core of stoicism is the dichotomy of control: something is either in my control or it is not, or it is some combination of the two which must be unraveled. Applied to emotion: I can't control when I weep. I can't control when I feel sorrow. I can control how I react to those experiences. Attempting to simply suppress such emotions is not being a stoic, at least as I have learned it, since doing so violates the dichotomy of control -- attempting to control that which is beyond our control.

  • by steve_adams_86 on 6/16/22, 4:00 AM

    It seems as though the author has completely missed a core tenet of the philosophy, and one which is reiterated by many stoic philosophers.

    You accept what you can’t control, and that which you can, you enact your virtues to ensure the best outcomes possible.

    You don’t simply let things be and accept it. You need to be constantly engaged in observation and reflection to ensure who you are and what you do is virtuous, and regularly assess if you are succeeding or not.

    If anything stoicism strikes me as a philosophy which encourages practitioners not to accept the world as it is, but to live in harmony with it. Harmony doesn’t mean complacency, but living according to the environment you are a part of. You can live as you please (set goals, challenge yourself, explore, etc) non complacently, but it will necessarily need to coincide and function with the reality you exist in as well.

  • by proc0 on 6/16/22, 3:43 AM

    > It may be tempting to embrace a philosophy that counsels us not to be sad, not to mourn the things we’ve lost, to accept all that happens as fate, and to do our duty even as the world crumbles around us.

    Stoicism, Buddhism, Christianity, etc., are moral frameworks, and they all have an element of explaining the pain in the world in a way that absolves the individual from responsibility of others, while at the same time emphasizing personal responsibility, which is what the article is arguing against.

    Which sounds like the author is probably an atheist since the premise is about taking responsibility for the pain in the whole world. Regardless, I always wonder when people take this tone of moral clarity, on what moral framework are they drawing their conclusions from.

  • by virissimo on 6/16/22, 4:15 AM

    IMO, this entire essay is misguided. There isn't anyone going around practicing Stoicism as it was practiced in Ancient Rome. Instead they take their psychological techniques (some of which are shared by Buddhism, Christianity, and cognitive behavioral therapy) such as the dichotomy of control and negative visualization and reject some of the other parts of the overall philosophy (mostly the metaphysics and similar).

    Either those techniques works or they don't. If they don't work, then they should be abandoned for that reason. If they do work, the fact that Seneca had a disciple that turned bad as an adult or that Aurelius wasn't an abolitionist doesn't do anything to change that.

    This is just the genetic fallacy in essay form.

  • by dkarl on 6/16/22, 4:27 AM

    I'm not all that fond of Stoicism, but this appears to be a recycled version of the same accusation that used to be leveled against Buddhism, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's based on the same misunderstanding. And as a progressive in the 21st century, it never occurred to me that interpreting Stoicism for myself would mean adopting the politics of long-dead Romans as my personal concept of "duty." Even with traditional religion it's considered weird and extremist to take that approach. For me, and for this author, a charitable reading of Stoicism would have to include compassion and activism in the concept of duty, similar to the ethical stance of engaged Buddhism.

  • by recursivedoubts on 6/16/22, 4:01 AM

    This headline is a comic example of the genetic fallacy.

    https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/genetic

    The article continues in this vein, and then presents a straw man version of stoicism in which rape, murder and so forth is greeted with indifference. I am not an unqualified fan of stoicism, but this is a ridiculous caricature of the philosophy, and the alternative presented by the article appears to be an appeal to allow emotion to drive our behavior.

    I do not notice a dearth of emotional reasoning or a surfeit of stoic reasoning in today's world.

  • by waynecochran on 6/16/22, 3:50 AM

    There must be something to stoicism to have survived for so long. What are the alternative philosophies that would guide a young man today? I gave my son a copy of Ryan Holiday’s The Obstacle is the Way. I found much if it quite useful. Such a counter to the shallow thinking of today.

  • by Schwolop on 6/16/22, 3:44 AM

    For those who've not seen this domain before (although it is showing up more frequently on HN these days), Psyche "is a digital magazine from Aeon that illuminates the human condition through psychology, philosophy and the arts."

    Its essays are hit and miss for me (and there's a fair bit of miss from this one, even though I think the discussion here is interesting...), but there's more than enough interesting ones to keep me coming back. It's one of the few sites around that has convinced me to join its newsletter. And if you're in a cosmopolitan city (Melbourne, London, New York, etc) they host semi-regular philosophy night events too. Worth a look.

  • by kromem on 6/16/22, 4:17 AM

    It's wild to me that to this day we still perpetuate the philosophical biases that originated with the early church, and as such everyone is familiar with Stoic and (Neo)Platonic philosophy, and yet very few people are familiar with the Epicureans.

    A book like De Rerum Natura was talking about the quantization of light, survival of the fittest and the progression of now extinct 'freaks' of nature in the development of life, a universe that originated by atoms clashing randomly in the void. That rainbows were from light interacting with water vapor and that lightning and thunder might happen at the same time and just take different lengths of time to reach us.

    And their philosophy for living a good life boiled down to self-knowledge, socialization with friends, and avoiding suffering.

    They deserve far more credit than they got, and were effectively ignored throughout most of modern history because they saw a world that operated by its own laws and thus didn't see appeasement of gods as something to be concerned with.

    The Stoics and Platonists with their perfect origin from which existence emerged by design was much more palatable to the church, and the group with the best understanding of the physical world in hindsight remains mostly a footnote, despite in antiquity (before the rise of the church) having been one of the major philosophical schools.

  • by smitty1e on 6/16/22, 8:01 AM

    The article, for all its virtues, doesn't seem to mention a famous modern Stoic, Vice Admiral James Stockdale[1].

    Stockdale was tortured in the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War and his writings are studied (or at least were 30 years ago) at USNA.

    I find stoicism an intellectually useful set of concepts, in a tactical sense. IMO, it seems morally limited, strategically.

    For example, taking care of the environment is sensible, but why do I care? If I'm just so many atoms, then the eventual effects of my folly are SEP[2]. The drive to be mature and responsible will _always_ succumb to rationalization.

    Case in point: the national debt. Who in their right mond lives beyond their means? Only pretty much _every_ government.

    The human flesh is always corrupt; the mind is prone to rationalizations; the only "hope", if one cares to go there, is through the soul. Finding a community of faith to offer moral feedback to the Stoic mind and the fallen flesh is left as an exercise for the reader.

    [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stockdale

    [2] Someone Else's Problem

  • by drewcoo on 6/16/22, 6:43 AM

    The article doesn't show how stoicism is at fault for any fault shown. Which is especially poignant given that Stoicism is about ideals of virtue. (The until recent decades meaning of virtue as "truth" and not "fake.") Stoicism cares about fault and is not afraid to judge itself.

    Nor does the article show how now people today are driven by virtue more than things like . . . say, influence. Or who those virtuous but doomed/destructive Stoics are who seek to follow truth.

    This is an invective against not just stoicism but truth itself. What do I expect from Psyche? How do they vet these things?

    To Henry Gruber at Harvard, you seem to have an early draft of something here. It has . . . problems. But maybe potential. You've read and thought a little. With a little more, what can you make it into?

    There is a political case to be made against virtue (this was not it). There is an economic case (this not it). There is even something to be said for un-virtuous romance or how sex workers are virtuous but not really romance (not this thing, Gruber). So what is this?

  • by ccday on 6/16/22, 3:57 AM

    Is there anyone alive practicing “Roman Stoicism”? People today take valuable and useful ideas from the philosophy of Stoicism such as those that underpin CBT. Why disregard these because some people did or wrote things you disagree with hundreds of years ago? The author doesn’t say anything meaningful here.

  • by refurb on 6/16/22, 3:59 AM

    This is a weird article since it doesn't actually describe stoicism accurately.

    "Don't be sad"? Huh?

  • by iambateman on 6/16/22, 3:49 AM

    This is a good article.

    I believe the author is right — stoicism ends in detached, aloof, disconnected aloneness and probably wouldn’t create a society we want to live in.

    Regardless of whether you think Jesus is God…the end of his teaching is the opposite of disconnected aloneness.

  • by rendang on 6/16/22, 4:21 AM

    I think the author makes a strong point insofar as completely detaching ourselves from outcomes out of our control can't be done without lessening in some way our humanity. But the common human propensity is to be over-invested in external things that we can't control and that will not give us ultimate satisfaction, which is why Stoicism and other wisdom philosophies can be so appealing.

    The question I would have for the author is, with what framework do you determine what is worth attaching to, worth grieving over?

  • by internet_ethos on 6/16/22, 4:51 AM

    I really like how the author ended the piece. We ought to do something when our homes invaded, grief when a loved one passes away. Although, showing no emotions might indicate signs of inner strength, it may make us less human. However, I don’t agree that stoicism is totally pernicious.

    I like stoicism as it made my life a little more bearable. I can take the good, and ditch the useless, though.

  • by handojin on 6/16/22, 4:04 AM

  • by ryanmcbride on 6/16/22, 4:09 AM

    This is like a 17 year olds idea of what stoicism is.