Irvine plumbs the wisdom of Stoic philosophy, one of the most popular and successful schools of thought in ancient Rome, and shows how its insight and advice are still remarkably applicable to modern lives. In A Guide to the Good Life, Irvine offers a refreshing presentation of Stoicism, showing how this ancient philosophy can still direct us toward a better life.
Using the psychological insights and the practical techniques of the Stoics, Irvine offers a roadmap for anyone seeking to avoid the feelings of chronic dissatisfaction that plague so many of us.
Irvine looks at various Stoic techniques for attaining tranquility and shows how to put these techniques to work in our own life. Although he did not contribute to the liter- ature of Stoicism, Cato was a practicing Stoic; indeed, Seneca refers to him as the perfect Stoic. And Marcus Aurelius, besides being a philosopher, was a Roman emperor—indeed, arguably one of the greatest Roman emperors.
They were courageous, temperate, reasonable, and self-disciplined—traits I would like to possess. In my research on desire, I discovered nearly unanimous agreement among thoughtful people that we are unlikely to have a good and meaningful life unless we can overcome our insatiability.
This seemed to be an important insight, but it left open the question of how, exactly, we could accomplish this. The Stoics, I was delighted to discover, had an answer to this question. They developed a fairly simple technique that, if practiced, can make us glad, if only for a time, to be the person we are, living the life we happen to be living, almost regardless of what that life might be.
The more I studied the Stoics, the more I found myself drawn to their philosophy. But when I tried to share with others my newfound enthusiasm for Stoicism, I quickly discov- ered that I had not been alone in misconceiving the philosophy. Friends, relatives, and even my colleagues at the university seemed to think the Stoics were individuals whose goal was to suppress all emotion and who therefore led grim and passive lives.
It dawned on me that the Stoics were the victims of a bum rap, one that I myself had only recently helped promote. After learning about Stoicism, I started, in a low-key, experimental fashion, giving it a try as my philosophy of life.
Readers will naturally be curious about what is involved in the practice of Stoicism. A modern would-be Stoic might, as an alternative, consult the works of the ancient Stoics, but what she will discover on attempting to do so is that many of these works—in partic- ular, those of the Greek Stoics—have been lost. The challenge I faced in writing this book was to construct such a plan from clues scattered throughout Stoic writings. Although the remainder of this book provides detailed guidelines for would-be Stoics, let me describe here, in a preliminary fashion, some of the things we will want to do if we adopt Stoicism as our philosophy of life.
We will reconsider our goals in living. In particular, we will take to heart the Stoic claim that many of the things we desire— most notably, fame and fortune—are not worth pursuing. We will instead turn our attention to the pursuit of tranquility and what the Stoics called virtue. We will discover that Stoic virtue has very little in common with what people today mean by the word. We will also discover that the tranquility the Stoics sought is not the kind of tranquility that might be brought on by the ingestion of a tranquilizer; it is not, in other words, a zombie-like state.
It is instead a state marked by the absence of negative emotions such as anger, grief, anxiety, and fear, and the presence of positive emotions—in particular, joy. We will also recognize how easy it is for other people to disturb our tranquility, and we will therefore practice Stoic strategies to prevent them from upsetting us.
Finally, we will become a more thoughtful observer of our own life. Practicing Stoicism will obviously take effort, but this is true of all genuine philosophies of life. To practice this philosophy of life, he will spend time discovering, exploring, and ranking sources of pleasure and investigating any untoward side effects they might have. The enlightened hedonist will then devise strate- gies for maximizing the amount of pleasure he experiences.
The effort required to practice Stoicism will probably be greater than that required to practice enlightened hedonism but less than that required to practice, say, Zen Buddhism. I have already mentioned one such cost: the danger that you will spend your days pursuing valueless things and will therefore waste your life. Some readers might, at this point, wonder whether the practice of Stoicism is compatible with their religious beliefs.
In the case of most religions, I think it is. Having said this, I should add that it is also possible for some- one simultaneously to be an agnostic and a practicing Stoic. Introduction 13 The remainder of this book is divided into four parts. In part 1, I describe the birth of philosophy. Although modern philos- ophers tend to spend their days debating esoteric topics, the primary goal of most ancient philosophers was to help ordi- nary people live better lives.
Stoicism, as we shall see, was one of the most popular and successful of the ancient schools of philosophy. In parts 2 and 3, I explain what we must do in order to prac- tice Stoicism.
I start by describing the psychological techniques the Stoics developed to attain and subsequently maintain tran- quility. I then describe Stoic advice on how best to deal with the stresses of everyday life: How, for example, should we respond when someone insults us? Although much has changed in the past two millennia, human psychology has changed little. I end the book by relating the insights I have gained in my own practice of Stoicism. My fellow academics might have an interest in this book; they might, for example, be curious about my interpretation of various Stoic utterances.
The audience I am most interested in reaching, though, is ordinary individuals who worry that they might be misliving. It also includes those who have a philosophy of life but worry that it is somehow defective. The pages that follow are my answer to this question. They were those individuals who not only asked questions—such as Where did the world come from? Where did people come from?
They would have gone on to ask why the gods made the world, how they made it, and—most vexatiously to those trying to answer their questions—who made the gods. However and whenever it may have started, philosophical thinking took a giant leap forward in the sixth century bc. According to Diogenes, early Western philosophy had two separate branches.
If we follow through the various successors of Pythagoras, we ultimately come to Epicurus, whose own school of philosophy was a major rival to the Stoic school. Socrates lived a remarkable life. He also died a remarkable death: He had been tried for corrupting the youth of Athens and other alleged misdeeds, found guilty by his fellow citi- zens, and sentenced to die by drinking poison hemlock.
He could have avoided this punishment by throwing himself on the mercy of the court or by running away after the sentence had been handed down. His philosophical principles, though, would not let him do these things. Plato, the best-known of his students, founded the school of philosophy known as the Academy, Aristippus founded the Cyrenaic school, Euclides founded the Megarian school, Phaedo founded the Elian school, and Antisthenes founded the Cynic school.
What had been a trickle of philosophical activity before Socrates became, after his death, a veritable torrent. Philosophy Takes an Interest in Life 19 Why did this explosion of interest in philosophy take place? In part because Socrates changed the focus of philosophical inquiry. Before Socrates, philosophers were primarily inter- ested in explaining the world around them and the phenomena of that world—in doing what we would now call science.
Although Socrates studied science as a young man, he aban- doned it to focus his attention on the human condition. Rather, it was the extent to which he allowed his way of life to be affected by his philosophical speculations. Indeed, according to the philosopher Luis E.
Plato belonged to the former group; in his Academy, Plato was more interested in exploring philosophical theory than in dispensing lifestyle advice. In Greece and Rome, however, the rise of democracy meant that those who were able to persuade others were most likely to have successful careers in politics or law. Philosophy Takes an Interest in Life 21 These parents might have sought the services of a sophist, whose goal was to teach pupils to win arguments.
To achieve this goal, sophists taught various techniques of persuasion, including both appeals to reason and appeals to emotion. In particular, they taught students that it was possible to argue for or against any proposition whatsoever. Alternatively, parents might have sought the services of a philosopher.
Like sophists, philosophers taught persua- sive techniques, but unlike sophists, they eschewed appeals to emotion. Also unlike sophists, philosophers thought that besides teaching their pupils how to persuade, they should teach them how to live well.
Consequently, according to the historian H. There are no longer schools of philosophy, and this is a shame. It is true that philosophy is still done within schools— more precisely, within the philosophy departments of universi- ties—but the cultural role played by philosophy departments is quite unlike the role played by the ancient philosophical schools.
But even though schools of philosophy are a thing of the past, people are in as much need of a philosophy of life as they ever were. The question is, Where can they go to obtain one? If they go to the philosophy department of the local univer- sity, they will, as I have explained, probably be disappointed. What if they instead turn to their local church? Their pastor might tell them what they must do to be a good person, that is, what they must do to be morally upstanding.
They might be instructed, for example, not to steal or tell lies or in some reli- gions have an abortion. Their pastor will also probably explain what they must do to have a good afterlife: They should come to services regularly and pray and in some religions tithe. But their pastor will probably have relatively little to say on what they must do to have a good life. This, one imagines, is why the adherents of the various religions, despite the differences in their religious beliefs, end up with the same impromptu philosophy of life, namely, a form of enlightened hedonism.
Thus, although Lutherans, Baptists, Jews, Mormons, and Catholics hold different religious views, they are remarkably alike when encountered outside of church or synagogue. They hold similar jobs and have similar career ambitions. They live in similar homes, furnished in a similar manner. And they lust to the same degree for whatever consumer products are currently in vogue.
It is clearly possible for a religion to require its adherents to adopt a particular philosophy of life. Consider, by way of illus- tration, the Hutterite religion, which teaches its adherents that one of the most valuable things in life is a sense of community. We can, of course, question whether this is a sound philosophy of life. What this means is that it is entirely possible these days for someone to have been raised in a religion and to have taken philosophy courses in college but still to be lacking a philosophy of life.
What, then, should those seeking a philosophy of life do? Perhaps their best option is to create for themselves a virtual school of philosophy by reading the works of the philos- ophers who ran the ancient schools. This, at any rate, is what, in the following pages, I will be encouraging readers to do. In ancient Greece, when schools of philosophy were still prominent features of the cultural landscape, there were any number of schools to which parents could send their chil- dren.
We could begin our tour in the Agora, where Socrates a century earlier had philosophized with the citizens of Athens.
On the northern side of the Agora we would see the Stoa Poikile, or Painted Porch, and holding forth there might be Zeno of Citium, the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy. Philosophy Takes an Interest in Life 25 As we walked through Athens, we might come across the Cynic philosopher Crates, whose school of philosophy Zeno had once attended. Furthermore, whereas parents might have willingly sent their children to study with Zeno, it is unlikely that they encour- aged them to become Cynics, inasmuch as Cynic doctrines, if successfully internalized, would guarantee their child a life of ignominious poverty.
Heading northwest and leaving the city by Dipylon Gate, we would come to the Garden of the Epicureans, presided over by Epicurus himself. The Garden was in fact a working garden in which the Epicureans grew their own vegetables. Continuing toward the northwest, about a mile from the Agora, we would come to the Academy, the school of philos- ophy founded by Plato in bc, a bit more than a decade after the death of Socrates.
It was a parklike retreat, furnished with walks and fountains. On the Academy grounds were buildings, paid for by Plato and his friends. Holding forth there in bc might have been Polemo, who had inherited the position of master of the school. In this wooded area, near a shrine to Apollo Lykeios, we could see the Peripatetics, disciples of Aristotle, walking and talking, and at the head of the group might be Theophrastus.
But this is only the beginning of the educational options open to ancient parents. Besides the schools mentioned in connection with our walking tour, there were the Cyrenaic, Skeptic, Megarian, and Elian schools mentioned earlier, to which we can add several other schools mentioned by Diogenes Laertius, including the Eretrian, Annicerean, and Theodorean schools, along with the schools run by the Eudaemonists, the Truth-lovers, the Refutationists, the Reasoners from Analogy, the Physicists, the Moralists, and the Dialecticians.
Sometimes fathers studied alongside their sons. Other adults, though never having belonged to a school, might have attended its lectures as guests. Their motives were prob- ably very much like the motives modern individuals have in attending a public lecture: They sought to be enlightened and entertained.
The early Stoics, for example, were interested not only in a philosophy of life, but in physics and logic as well, for the simple reason that they thought these areas of study were inherently entwined. The Cyrenaics and Cynics were inter- ested in neither physics nor logic; at their schools, all one was taught was a philosophy of life. Those schools that offered students a philosophy of life differed in the philosophy they recommended.
The Cyrenaics, for example, thought the grand goal in living was the expe- rience of pleasure and therefore advocated taking advantage of every opportunity to experience it. The Cynics advocated an ascetic lifestyle: If you want a good life, they argued, you must learn to want next to nothing. The Stoics fell somewhere between the Cyrenaics and the Cynics: They thought people should enjoy the good things life has to offer, including friend- ship and wealth, but only if they did not cling to these good things.
Indeed, they thought we should periodically interrupt our enjoyment of what life has to offer to spend time contem- plating the loss of whatever it is we are enjoying. Those who took their philosophy seriously attempted to live that philosophy from day to day. Instead, I think that which philosophy of life a person should choose depends on her personality and circumstances.
But having made this admission, let me add that I think there are very many people whose personality and circum- stances make them wonderful candidates for the practice of Stoicism. Furthermore, whatever philosophy of life a person ends up adopting, she will probably have a better life than if she tried to live—as many people do—without a coherent philosophy of life.
And by Zeno, I mean Zeno of Citium, not to be confused with Zeno of Elea, who is famous for a paradox involving Achilles and a tortoise, or with any of the seven other Zenos mentioned by Diogenes Laertius in his biographical sketches.
Among them were philosophy books purchased in Athens. As the result of a shipwreck, Zeno found himself in Athens, and while there, he decided to take advantage of the philo- sophical resources the city had to offer. Just then, Crates the Cynic was walking by. They instead advocated a rather extreme philosophical lifestyle. Socially speaking, they were the ancient equivalent of what we today call the homeless: They lived in the streets and slept on the ground.
Reviling or blows or insults are nothing to him. The Cynics were renowned for their wit and wisdom. And like Socrates, the Cynics sought to instruct not only those who offered themselves as pupils but anyone at all, including those who were reluctant to be taught.
He therefore came up with the idea of focusing not just on a philosophical lifestyle or a philosophical theory, but combining lifestyle with theory, the way Socrates had done. He went off to study with Stilpo, of the Megarian school. Crates responded by physically trying to drag him away. He also studied with Polemo at the Academy, and in around bc, he started his own school of philosophy.
In his teaching, he appears to have mixed the lifestyle advice of Crates with the theoretical philosophy of Polemo. Those who studied Stoicism under him started with logic, moved on to physics, and ended with ethics. Logic is, after all, the study of the proper use of reasoning. By teaching their students logic, the Stoics were helping them develop these skills: Students who knew logic could detect the falla- cies committed by others and thereby prevail over them in arguments.
And besides providing explanations of natural phenomena, as modern physics does, Stoic physics was concerned with what we would call theology. Zeno, for example, tried to explain such things as the existence and nature of the gods, why the gods created our universe and its inhabitants, the role the gods play in determining the outcome of events, and the proper relationship between people and the gods.
The Stoic conception of ethics, readers should realize, differs from our modern conception. We think of ethics as the study of moral right and wrong. A modern- day ethicist might wonder, for example, whether abortion is morally permissible, and if so, under what circumstances.
The Stoics, however, thought it entirely possible for someone to have a bad life despite making a very good living. What, then, must a person do to have what the Stoics would call a good life? Be virtuous! Tell a modern reader that the Stoics advocate that she live in a virtuous manner, and she might roll her eyes; indeed, to this reader, nuns would be prime examples of virtuous individuals, and what makes them virtuous are their chastity, humility, and kindheartedness.
Are the Stoics, then, advocating that we live like nuns? To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live; it is to live, as Zeno put it, in accordance with nature. And for what function were people designed? To answer this question, the Stoics thought, we need only examine ourselves. On doing this, we will discover that we have certain instincts, as do all animals.
But we differ from other animals in one important respect: We have the ability to reason. From this we can conclude, Zeno would assert, that we were designed to be reasonable. And if we use our reason, we will further conclude that we were designed to do certain things, that we have certain duties.
We should, for example, honor our parents, be agreeable to our friends, and be concerned with the interests of our countrymen. Although, as I have said, the primary concern of the Stoics was with ethics—with living virtuously and thereby having a good life—they were also interested in logic and physics.
And by studying physics, they hoped to gain insight into the purpose for which we were designed. The Stoics came up with various metaphors to explain the relationship between the three components of their philosophy. If we lived in perfect accordance with nature—if, that is, we were perfect in our practice of Stoicism—we would be what the Stoics refer to as a wise man or sage.
For the Stoics, however, the near impossi- bility of becoming a sage is not a problem. They talk about sages primarily so they will have a model to guide them in their practice of Stoicism. The sage is a target for them to aim at, even though they will probably fail to hit it. The sage, in other words, is to Stoicism as Buddha is to Buddhism.
When Cleanthes grew old, though, he started losing students to other schools, and the future of Stoicism looked bleak. When he died, leadership of the Stoic school was passed on to his pupil Chrysippus c. After the death of Chrysippus, the Stoic school continued to prosper under a succession of leaders, including Panaetius of Rhodes, who is remembered in the annals of Stoicism not as an innovator but as an exporter of the philosophy.
When Panaetius traveled to Rome in around bc, he took Stoicism with him. He befriended Scipio Africanus and other Roman gentlemen, got them interested in philosophy, and thereby became the founder of Roman Stoicism. After importing Stoicism, the Romans adapted the doctrine to suit their needs. For one thing, they showed less interest in logic and physics than the Greeks had.
As we have seen, the primary ethical goal of the Greek Stoics was the attainment of virtue. And by tranquility they did not have in mind a zombie-like state. Rather, Stoic tranquility was a psychological state marked by the absence of negative emotions, such as grief, anger, and anxiety, and the presence of positive emotions, such as joy.
For the Roman Stoics, the goals of attaining tranquility and attaining virtue were connected, and for this reason, when they discuss virtue, they are likely to discuss tranquility as well. One last comment is in order on the connection for the Roman Stoics between the goal of attaining virtue and the goal of attaining tranquility. This person might therefore become confused about what things are really good, consequently might fail to pursue them, and might, as a result, fail to attain virtue.
Thus, for the Roman Stoics, the pursuit of virtue and the pursuit of tranquility are compo- nents of a virtuous circle—indeed, a doubly virtuous circle: The pursuit of virtue results in a degree of tranquility, which in turn makes it easier for us to pursue virtue.
Why did the Roman Stoics give the attainment of tranquility a more prominent role than their Greek predecessors did? Part of the answer to this question, I think, is that the Roman Stoics had less confidence than the Greeks in the power of pure reason to motivate people.
The Greek Stoics thought that the best way to get people to pursue virtue was to make them understand what things were good: If a person understood what the truly good things were, he, being rational, would necessarily pursue them and thereby become virtuous. The Roman Stoics therefore seem to have concluded that by sugarcoating virtue with tranquility—more precisely, by pointing to the tranquility people would gain by pursuing virtue—they would make Stoic doctrines more attractive to ordinary Romans.
Furthermore, Stoic teachers such as Musonius Rufus and Epictetus had another reason for highlighting tranquility: By doing so, they made their school more attractive to potential students. In the ancient world, we should remember, schools of philosophy were in direct competition with each other. It has been suggested, for example, that in the middle of the third century bc, the Academic and Stoic schools of philosophy, because they were losing students to the rival Epicurean school, decided to join into a philosophical alliance and modify their doctrines accordingly, with the common purpose of attracting students away from the Epicureans.
For example, when Potamo of Alexandria decided to start a school of philosophy, he had a stroke of marketing genius: He decided that the best way to draw students was to cherry-pick from the philosoph- ical doctrines of competing schools. More to the point, we should remember that Zeno himself, to concoct Greek Stoicism, bent and blended the doctrines of at least three different philosophical schools: the Cynics, the Megarians, and the Academy.
By highlighting tranquility in their philosophy, the Stoics not only made it more attractive to ancient Romans but made it, I think, more attractive to modern individuals as well. It is unusual, after all, for modern individuals to have an interest in becoming more virtuous, in the ancient sense of the word. Thus, tell someone that you possess and are willing to share with him an ancient strategy for attaining virtue, and you will likely be met with a yawn. Indeed, if asked, he might go on at length about how his life has been blighted by tranquility-disrupting negative emotions.
The First Stoics 43 It is for this reason that in the following pages I focus my attention on the Roman rather than the Greek Stoics, and it is for this reason that the primary focus of my examination of the Roman Stoics is not their advice on how to attain virtue but their advice on how to attain and maintain tranquility. Having said this, I should add that readers who follow Roman Stoic advice on attaining tranquility might thereby attain virtue as well.
Should this happen, so much the better! Seneca was the best writer of the bunch, and his essays and letters to Lucilius form a quite accessible intro- duction to Roman Stoicism. Musonius is notable for his prag- matism: He offered detailed advice on how practicing Stoics should eat, what they should wear, how they should behave toward their parents, and even how they should conduct their sex life.
Nor was he particularly original. Nevertheless, his Stoic writings are quite wonderful. His essays and letters are full of insight into the human condition. In these writings, Seneca talks about the things that typically make people unhappy—such as grief, anger, old age, and social anxieties—and about what we can do to make our life not just tolerable but joyful. Seneca, like the other Roman Stoics I will discuss, was not stoically resigned to life; he was instead an active participant in it.
And like these other Stoics, he was a complex individual. Indeed, even if Seneca had never written a word of philosophy, he would have made it into the history books for three other reasons. He would be remembered as a successful playwright. Thus it was that after eight years of banishment, Seneca returned to Rome. Readers need to keep in mind, though, that unlike Cynicism, Stoicism does not require its adher- ents to adopt an ascetic lifestyle. To the contrary, the Stoics thought there is nothing wrong with enjoying the good things life has to offer, as long as we are careful in the manner in which we enjoy them.
In particular, we must be ready to give up the good things without regret if our circumstances should change. In 62, Burrus died, either from illness or as the result of being poisoned.
Seneca realized that his days at court were numbered, and he attempted to retire from politics, pleading ill health and old age. When the friends who were present at his execution wept over his fate, Seneca chastised them.
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Loved each and every part of this book. I will definitely recommend this book to philosophy, non fiction lovers. Your Rating:.
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