The Three Disciplines of Stoicism
The Stoic training program
The Stoics taught that there were three Stoic disciplines:
There are three domains in which a person must be trained if he’s to become truly good. The first is the domain of desires and aversions, and the upshot of the training is that he never fails to get what he desires and never experiences what he wants to avoid. The second is the domain of inclination and disinclination, and in general of appropriate behavior, and the upshot of the training is that he acts in an orderly and well-reasoned manner, rather than being careless. The third is the domain of immunity to error and rash judgment, and in general the domain of assent.
Discourses, 3.2
These are domains that one must progress in order to become more Stoic: the discipline of desire, discipline of action, and discipline of assent.
Marcus Aurelius once exclaimed:
Now they see you as a beast, a monkey. But in a week they’ll think you’re a god—if you rediscover your beliefs and honor the logos.
Meditations, 4.16
What are those beliefs? They’re given by the Stoic domains:
Objective judgment, now, at this very moment.
Unselfish action, now, at this very moment.
Willing acceptance—now, at this very moment—of all external events.
That’s all you need.
Meditations, 9.6
If you desire what is up to you, aim to act prosocially, and pursue the truth then you’ll make progress on the Stoic path.
To fully understand each discipline, one needs to internalize basic Stoic psychology.
For the Stoics, life involves forming impressions. We reflect on these and judge them. Our value judgments spur action.
In the most basic sense, we physically receive information about the world. In ancient Greek myth, Palamedes voyages to call Odysseus from Ithaca and into war. From his ships, he views the shores of Ithaca. This is the impression. He judges it. He is not hallucinating. He correctly judges that he sees Ithaca. Later, he watches Odysseus ravage his fields like a madman. Again, he receives the physical impression – that Odysseus is ruining his own fields by haphazardly plowing. He can clearly see that and accepts it as so. Yet Odysseus’s men and Penelope tell him Odysseus is insane – should he assent to this?
That’s the kind of question we’re faced with each day. The impressions we assent to will determine what we value and do. They’ll shape the world we live in.
Desire
Essentially all ancient philosophers targeted desire as the root of our unhappiness. We live in a sick society that wants the wrong things.
In particular, we desire things that are not up to us and are not fundamentally valuable. Likewise, we’re averse to experiences that are not ultimately bad.
Of the 3 disciplines, Epictetus writes:
The most important and urgent of these domains is the one that has to do with the passions. A passion is only ever the result of frustrated desire or ineffective aversion. This is the domain that entails mental turmoil, confusion, wretchedness, misery, sorrow, grief, and fear, and which makes us envious and jealous, until we can’t even listen to reason.
Discourses, 3.2
Instead of craving wealth, status, or pleasure, we ought to target living according to nature. More simply put, Epictetus urges us to be excellent in character. That alone is completely up to us. Everything else can be willingly accepted.
Nietzschean philosophy is, in many ways, the precise opposite of Stoicism. Where the Stoics are Apollonian and egalitarian, Nietzsche is Dionysion and hierarchical. Yet Nietzsche put the essence of the discipline of desire best when he wrote:
My formula for what is great in mankind is amor fati: not to wish for anything other than that which is; whether behind, ahead, or for all eternity. Not just to put up with the inevitable--much less to hide it from oneself, for all idealism is lying to oneself in the face of the necessary-but to love it.
Ecce Homo
Action
Epictetus distinguished between desire and impulse. Desire is what we fundamentally want, without exception. Failing to get it results in passion and suffering. Impulse refers to what we’re motivated to achieve, but we don’t experience the same deep need. When impulse is frustrated, we’re unperturbed.
If the discipline of desire is about an unwavering focus on acting virtuously, the discipline of action concerns how to make that happen in a world of indifferents. In other words, it’s about forming the right impulses for action.
Indifferents – wealth, status, and pleasure – are the material of virtue. It’s by using them well that we display virtue.
The Stoics encouraged us to act with a “reserve clause” – our preferences should respect Fortune.
As Marcus Aurelius advised:
We need to master the art of acquiescence. We need to pay attention to our impulses, making sure they don’t go unmoderated, that they benefit others, that they’re worthy of us. We need to steer clear of desire in any form and not try to avoid what’s beyond our control.
Meditations 11.37
The philosopher pursues all external goals with the clause “fate permitting.” This includes the noble efforts we put into improving ourselves, our relationships, and the world at large. Such things are external. We ought to use them well, without placing our happiness in the hands of indifferent Fate. This is the focus of the discipline of action.
Judgment
When the Greeks tell Palamedes that Odysseus is destroying his fields out of madness, he suspends his judgment. He goes to watch Odysseus plow his fields:
Palamedes watched him. Then, quite suddenly, he snatched the baby Telemachus from Penelope’s arms and threw him down on the ground in front of the plow. At which Odysseus stopped. He was beaten.
Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
Palamedes put Odysseus’s madness to the test. In doing so, perhaps he models the attention and focus we should apply to any impression.
As Epictetus counseled:
But the first thing is not to be carried away by its intensity. You should say, ‘Wait a moment, impression. Let me see what you are and what you’re an impression of. Let me put you to the test.’
Discourses 2.18
The discipline of judgment is simply about believing what is true, rejecting what is false, and suspending our judgment when we ought to.
This three part division focuses our efforts on where we need to improve:
Desire: always aiming towards the good.
Action: make excellent decisions in our contingent world.
Judgment: see reality as clearly as we can.
Right desire, action, and assent are all one needs.
Michael Tremblay, who did his PhD on Epictetus, and I are running a cohort-based course on Stoicism Applied this month. 3 weeks on the 3 disciplines. Join us here.
Lines from Discourses are taken from Robin Waterfield’s translation.
Lines from Meditations are taken from Gregory Hays’ translation.
Thank you