Why Stoicism is True

A defense of the ancient Greco-Roman philosophy

Stoicism is an ancient Greek and Roman philosophy.

Millions of people, ancient and present, have found it practical and powerful. I count myself as one of these people.

Despite its growth in popularity, it’s not commonly realized how transformative it is.

What is it? Let’s describe it in three steps.

The first idea is a simple one: how you think about the world shapes how you experience it.

The Stoic and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius once wrote:

Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in your power. Take away then, when you choose, your opinion, and like a mariner, who has doubled the promontory, you will find calm, everything stable, and a waveless bay.

Meditations, 7.22

That emotions are downstream of our thoughts has been known for centuries. It finds support in contemporary work too. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett writes:

You are an architect of these experiences. Your river of feelings might feel like it’s flowing over you, but actually you’re the river’s source.

How Emotions are Made

The second idea is simple too: we can change how we think.

We are not ruled by unconscious drives. Instead, we're a “control center”. We choose to respond or react to every thought. Those decisions shape who we are over time. That's a message of hope and responsibility.

The third idea is ethical: good decisions and judgment are what fundamentally matters. This is an ethical idea in the ancient sense – it is a view on how to live well, not merely a statement about what rules we ought to follow.

If we are fundamentally reasoning and social beings, then our purpose is to fulfill that role to the best of our abilities.

This means building the character to make excellent decisions and pursue knowledge. Everything else is less important.

It’s useful to see everything else as “conditionally” good. Power is only good if it doesn’t corrupt. Pleasure is only good if it is caused by a good thing. Status should only be satisfying if it is deserved.

Good character is unconditionally good. One cannot ask any more of human beings other than that they build the character to do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons.

Stoicism offers a path to that kind of life. It’s a philosophy for people like us – decision makers in the broadest sense.

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But what makes a good decision?

The ancient answer is that decisions should be guided by the knowledge of our nature. We are essentially rational and social beings. Our purpose is to fulfill this reasoning and prosocial nature.

Today, however, it’s always difficult to say whether things have nonderivative functions. A hammer has the function we give it. It is a tool for mending things.

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools

Rudyard Kiplin, If

But what about human beings? Our nature is not given by evolution. One could say that the purpose of biological life is to survive and reproduce, but that would be a mistake. Just because we evolved in a certain way doesn’t say anything about our essential purpose. Teleology plays a merely metaphorical role in evolution.

Nature hides her ends and so ours is hidden as well.

Perhaps there is a religious meaning behind things. That possibility should not be eliminated. But it cannot be confidently endorsed.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

The fact of the matter is that this kind of issue, the question of our nature, is too abstract and uncertain. I don't know whether we have an essential nature. In fact, I suspect the very idea of essential natures is misguided.

Happily, we can know something without understanding its fundamental nature.
It’s possible to understand the traits of a good poker player without fully understanding the math that grounds the optimal play.

So perhaps, it is enough to say that we’re social and rational beings.

Like the bee, we must live with others. We do not live alone. We must play a role in the human cybernetic hive.

What's bad for the hive is bad for the bee.

Unlike the bee, we’re rational. Such a trait contains within it the quest for knowledge.

There is such a thing as virtue and that can be seen clearly.

The virtuous person is honest, resourceful, kind, respectful, thoughtful, courageous… These are ordinary and common sense traits.

Is goodness really so far away?  If I simply desire goodness, I will find that it is already here.

Confucius

Life is a timed game to become a good person.

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The Aristotelians held that virtue was not enough for living a good life. The Stoics held that it was sufficient.

The Stoics are correct.

If the idea of a good life is action relevant for each of us, it should be attainable. What is not attainable, just isn’t that important. Because the Aristotelian sense of happiness involves things that are out of our control and hence not necessarily important, it isn’t relevant to who we ought to be. Virtue is all that we have control over. Happily, that is enough.

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Others argue that we should sacrifice virtue for the greater good.

The resort to trade-offs is often used as an excuse and indicates a lack of resourcefulness. Suppose someone gives you the following thought experiment:

• There will be a nuclear war unless you torture an innocent person. Do you torture them?

In any realistic scenario of this sort, I suspect one either could find a way to prevent nuclear war without torturing the innocent person or one simply shouldn’t do it.

The deeper philosophical issue with this view is that we should think of the virtues as that which shouldn’t be sacrificed for speculative outcomes.

Every historical case of wrong for the sake of a greater good – whether radical environmentalism, communism, facism, or longtermism has involved:

• certain wrong

• for the sake of speculative greater goods

In such cases, we should do no wrong.

Think of good character as the safe and reliable investment and "the greater good” as a speculative one. We shouldn’t speculate until our safe investments are made. Likewise, one shouldn’t aim to maximize expected value at the expense of virtue.

The substantive philosophical argument here is that maximizing expected value eventually leads to ruin. Applying expected value theory reasoning in ethics results in consequentialism which will eventually result in ethical ruin.

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This is an essay that I've written and rewritten. Each time the theme is the same, but it hasn’t been perfected. I’ll likely write it again.

Like this imperfect essay, Stoicism is not a philosophy I’ve fully realized in my life. The Roman philosopher and political advisor, Seneca, used the analogy of a hospital. Most of us are philosophizing as patients – none of us are healed, each of us are sick.

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Our experience of the world is shaped by our thought and decisions. Happily, we can change what those are.

The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you, you will have no enemies, and you will not be harmed.

Epictetus, Enchiridion