Two Opposing Views of (modern) Stoicism
1/3/2011 8:38 AM, TheophileEscargot wrote:
>
> *Ancient Greco-Roman Moralist Philosophy*
>
> While we call them both "philosophy", these ancient schools had a much
> wider scope than philosophy today. Firstly, they were eminently
> practical schools, with the aim of encouraging their followers to live
> better, happier and more fulfilled lives. In a way, they were closer to
> the philosophy of"Chicken Soup for the Soul" or self-help movements like
> Dale Carnegie's than anything taught in contemporary philosophy classes.
*****
I don't entirely agree. Plato's Academy, for example,
continued to have a rigorous and technical curriculum. Stoics
like Chrysippus were far better known for their technical arguments
than as "self-help" gurus. Etc. I do agree that the expectation
was that one would live out one's ethical commitments, rather than
treating ethics as a purely academic (in the modern sense) exercise.
*****
> *Ancient Stoicism*
>
> Stoicism was one of the more popular schools. Practically, it had a
> strong focus on restraining the "pathea": negative emotions like anger,
*****
Again, I disagree. "Restraining" implies that
the pathos remains active in one's life, but is bottled
up so that it can't get out. Stoicism represented a
break from Aristotelian and Platonic views that taught
that the emotions always exist even in the virtuous person.
Stoicism is about _eliminating_ passions.
*****
> fear and hate. This was done with a variety of techniques involving the
> use of one's reason. Reason, Nature and Virtue/Excellence ("arete") were
*****
Again, I disagree. This implies that the Stoics
were committed to Reason only as a tool for restraining
the passions. The Stoics were committed to Reason and
Virtue as essential components of Eudaimonia.
*****
> There are two apparent paradoxes. The first is a circularity problem:
> Virtue/Excellence often seems to consist of actions to maximize
> Indifferent: a doctor who works round the clock to fight an epidemic is
> virtuous, but is acting on indifferents like life and health. The second
*****
I understand the appearance of paradox, but
I don't think the paradox exists. The Stoics deny that
the value of our action hinges on the external consequences,
and hold that this value inheres in the internal rationality
of the choice. If this idea is admitted to be coherent, then
it _must_ be the case that the virtue of the doctor will consist
in actions aiming at maximizing something which is not itself
good. (Kant held that same view, although with a completely
different system. H.A. Prichard (an obscure philosopher of
the early 20th C.) actually argues that the opposite view
(consequentialism) is incoherent.
*****
> is the Lazy Argument: why should a stoic bother to do anything at all if
> he can just lie in bed and regard his slow starvation with equanimity.
*****
This gets back to what I think was your earlier
misunderstanding. If Stoicism were _only_ aimed at
restraining the passions, this would follow. But
Stoicism has as its real goal Rational and Virtuous
action, with freedom from passions resulting. We
could free ourselves from passions by other means (as,
for example, by means of certain kinds of brain damage),
be this wouldn't be Virtue and wouldn't be eudaimonia.
By the way, this isn't the "Lazy Argument". The
LA was an attack on the determinism of the early Stoics,
of the form "If all events are fated to happen a certain
way, then why bother to do anything, because our actions
can't possible effect the outcome".
*****
> We can of course make guesses and construct our ow n solutions. But it's
> important not to confuse these modern reconstructions with an authentic
> ancient stoicism.
*****
When studying any ancient philosophy one has
to do intelligent interpretation of the data....
*****
> *Modern Stoicism*
>
> Before we get carried away with enthusiasm for stoicism. we should
> consider modern scholarship. Apart from some tenuous and superficial
> similarities, modern science doesn't much resemble ancient stoic
> physics. Most modern philosophers regard stoicism as an obscure
> historical curiosity. Of those who are interested, some regard the
> apparent paradoxes as fatal to it: Tad Brennan's book The Stoic Life
> <http://www.amazon.com/Stoic-Life-Emotions-Duties-Fate/dp/019921705X/>
> explains the problems lucidly. Others regard it as salvageable, but
> regarding an immense effort to rebuild the foundations: Lawrence
> Becker's A New Stoicism
> <http://www.amazon.com/New-Stoicism-Lawrence-C-Becker/dp/0691009643/> is
> an attempt in that direction. There are some who regard ancient stoicism
> as salvageable without major changes, but from the perspective of
> mainstream philosophy, they are a small faction within a tiny fringe.
*****
True.
*****
> So on this most important level, if you try stoicism and it works for
> you, there is no real need to pursue the theory further: this pragmatic
> proof will be enough. But stoicism is a philosophy of reason: some of us
> will be inclined to look further.
*****
Again, I partly agree and partly disagree. The
Stoics certainly believed that if one lived according to
Stoic principles one would be able to see progress in
their life. They certainly agreed that no-one would
reach eudaimonia by merely professing certain principles
and not acting upon them.
On the other hand, one cannot lead the Stoic
life without accepting certain principles. For example,
if I wish to eliminate anger from my life I must believe
that the insults of that person over there are not
real harms to me--they are neither good nor evil.
Epictetus' Handbook contains techniques like visualization
of bad outcomes (see, for example, sections 3 and 4) but
they are embedded in distinctly Stoic doctrine (see, for
example, sections 1,2, and 5). So while one could, for
example, practice yoga as a method of relaxation without
adopting _any_ of the beliefs of Vedic Hunduism, one cannot
practice the Stoic method of eliminating the passions without
adopting the core beliefs of the Stoics.
*****
> This research, on a systematic level, confirms much of what the stoics
> thought. People often assume that the way to be happy is to pursue
> immediate pleasures, and to accumulate material goods. Happiness
> research shows that these produce weak and transient pleasure only.
> People who are happy in the long term tend to be those who devote
> themselves to others, or pursue tasks and jobs they consider to be
> meaningful. The stoics seem to be correct that pursuing
> Virtue/Excellence (arete) leads to long-term happiness (Eudaimonia).
*****
I don't think that what the Stoics meant by Eudaimonia
is captured by the modern term "Happiness" studied by social
scientists. I agree that being a Stoic will probably help
you towards _that_ goal, and that "Happiness" is a component
of Eudaimonia. I deny that they are identical.
*****
> Firstly, is it true that good and evil are within our power?
>
> This aspect of stoic thought does not seem possible to investigate
> scientifically. This question still belongs to the domain of philosophy,
> even in modern philosophy.< / div>
*****
I agree.
*****
> Whatever the ancient stoics thought their proofs about the nature of
> good and evil to be, I don't think we can regard them as logically
> provable today. Instead, I think we have to start with an assumption
*****
I think you move too quickly here. Ethics is a
field of philosophy in which a great deal of work is
being done by a lot of people. I see no reason why
one can't develop good arguments in favor of Stoic Ethics
just as people try to do with Utilitarian Ethics or Kantian
Ethics, etc. There are contemporary Aristotelian and
Platonists about ethics--just because there are fewer
Stoics doesn't mean that we should give up.
*****
> that we define good and evil to be what is within our power, without
> claiming that we can prove this definition to be true. We can however
*****
I don't like the phrase "define". I don't think
the Stoics hold that good and evil are _defined_ to
be in our control. I would be happier with saying that
we will assert the belief that good and evil are in our
control....
*****
> So, that good and evil are in our power seems tenable. But what about
> the second part: can we really control our emotional responses to
> events? The evidence from cognitive behaviour therapy suggests this is
> true too. We can reduce the negative emotions we feel with practice.
>
> However, we should note that there is no evidence that we can completely
> eliminate negative emotions. The stoics, like all the Greco-Roman moral
> philosophers, frequently discussed the concept of the "sage", the
> philosophically perfect human being. All the schools had their own model
> of the sage: in stoicism, the stoic sage was completely free of negative
> emotions (pathea). However, no stoic philosopher that we know of
> actually claimed to have been a "sage": the "sage" seems t o have been a
> theoretical ideal, not a goal that a student is likely to achieve in a
> stoic programme.
*****
You miss the point.
Consider Epictetus' example from section 5 of the
Handbook. Most people think that death is evil, and so
when they see that they are about to die they experience
fear and misery. Socrates doesn't believe that death is
evil, and so when he sees his own death approaching he's
not fearful or miserable at all. So Socrates _completely
eliminated the passions of fear and misery_ with respect
to his forthcoming death. He didn't "restrain" them, or
"reduce" them or "moderate" them, he eliminated them. My
friend was extremely distressed by the outcome of a soccer
match. I, who could care less which team won, was not distressed
in the least.
Always, on every occasion, when someone believes that
an event is neither good nor evil the person experiences _no_
emotion regarding it. The only point of discussing the Sage
is to emphasize that there is no reason to suppose that
this ever fails--I don't care about the soccer game, and so I
experience no emotion regarding it, but I do care about the
budget crisis in my state, and so I experience emotions regarding
it. So I'm not a Sage. But we don't need to find a Sage in
order to figure out whether Stoicism works...we only need to
observe that in every single instance it works.
(I repeat an actual example from my own life. I was
once in a sporting event, and the official signaled a
foul, and I was angry because I knew that I hadn't committed
a foul. Then when I realized that the official had called the
foul _on my opponent, and not on me_, the anger dissipated.
It wasn't "reduced" or "controlled", it went away.)
*****
> Moreover, modern neuroscience is gaining an increasing, though still
> partial, knowledge of how the brain works. The evidence we have today
> suggests that emotions are an integral part of the way we think. There
*****
These books are the result of mistaken interpretations
of the data, as I have argued repeatedly before. What they
consider "emotions" is not the same as what the Stoics
consider "emotions" (for example, the apprehension of the
goodness of virtue is not a Stoic emotion, but the books you
cite assume that it is), and the Stoics never claimed that
whenever one eliminates emotions _no matter how_ one will
experience eudaimonia.
*****
> are good explanations in Antonio Damasio's booksDescartes' Error
> <http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human/dp/014303622X/>
> and Looking for Spinoza
> <http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Spinoza-Sorrow-Feeling-Brain/dp/0156028719/>,
> and in the Teaching Company course Passions: Philosophy and the
> Intelligence of Emotions
> <http://www.teach12.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=4123> . This
> is in reasonable accord with the stoic idea that emotions are the result
> of our cognitive judgements.
>
> However, the accord is not perfect. When we interact with other huma n
> beings, the pattern of impulses in our brain mirrors the state of their
> brain. When we observe someone in pain, our own brain shows the same
> pattern of pain. Empathy appears to be a part of the faculty of reason.
> Without feeling, we cannot think.
*****
This simply doesn't follow.
1) Empathic feelings are not always "passions".
2) The vast majority of humans regard the pain of
others as inherently bad, so we cannot tell whether the
impulse pattern we see results from the belief, or merely
from the perception, or some combination of the two.
3) Even if we accept that empathy is a programmed brain
response, this in no way demonstrates that it is rational
(and certainly not that thinking requires feeling--sociopaths
can think, after all).
*****
> The ancient stoics had a model of how the mind works which had the
> faculty of reason called the "hegemonikon" or ruling faculty, which was
> isolated from other human beings, and isolated from emotion. This was a
> reasonable assumption at the time, but it is no longer scientifically
> tenable.
*****
It is perfectly tenable. None of the evidence
you have cited overturns it.
*****
> At this point that a modern stoicism must diverge from ancient stoicism.
> However, there are several distinct paths that modern stoicism can take.
> I think of the major ones as Mystical or Scientific.
>
> The Mystical path continues to believe in the Hegemonikon as an isolated
> unit. To a degree it continues to believe in the divine fire underlying
> the universe, but in s tead of being a material part of the physics of
> the universe, this becomes a metaphysical force separated from the
> physical world. The points of agreement that mystical modern stoicism
> has with ancient stoicism are that the hegemonikon exists; the sage
> remains a possibility; and that empathy, compassion and grief are
> failures of stoicism. The points of disagreement with ancient stoicism
> are that it is dualist rather than monist; that the divine fire is
> mystical rather than physical. This is no longer a materialist philosophy.
*****
I utterly reject mysticism, but other than that
inappropriate word this paragraph is a good statement of
my own position.
*****
> Mystical modern stoicism also seems to have some problems. It's not
> clear why some parts of modern science should be accepted and some
> rejected. If there's a mystical realm separate from the physical realm,
*****
I reject no parts of modern science. I do
reject Scientism, which says that Science is all
there is.
*****
> it's not clear why a single Nature should be a source of morality.
> Dualism usually comes from the Neoplatonic tradition where there is a
*****
Dualism can equally well be Cartesian, with
no such consequences.
*****
> corrupt earthly realm and a perfect heavenly realm. It's not clear how
> the moral a n d practical teachings of stoicism are to be derived, if
> they belong in a separate realm to the physical.
*****
They were never derived from the physical aspects
of the world _as modern science understands the physical_
in the first place, so this isn't a problem.
*****
> The Scientific path retains the elements of stoicism that are not
> contradicted by modern science or philosophy. The points of agreement it
> has with ancient stoicism are that it remains monist; it remains
> materialist; it retains the ancient integration of science and
> philosophy. The points of disagreement are that certain emotions such as
> compassion and grief, if experienced to a certain degree, change from
> being failures of stoicism to essential aspects of cognition.
>
> One way to think of this is that the modern stoic's goal is not to
> become emotionless, but to become emotionally intelligent. The emotions
> he feels should be of a type and to a degree that is in accord with
> reason. If a close friend or relative dies, he will feel a sufficient
> degree of grief to process that loss, but not so much grief he is
> incapacitated. ;
*****
Rather than call this "Modern Stoicism", it is
much simpler to call it "Aristotelianism".
*****
> Note that the same does not apply to emotions such as fear and anger.
> These are not emotions that we need to interact with other human beings
> on a daily basis. While the adrenaline surges may be useful in a
> wilderness to fight off or flee from danger, in a controlled environment
> where calm thinking is needed, these are almost always
> counterproductive; and going against reason they should be discouraged.
>
> While this represents a difference from the theoretical absolute ideal
> of the "sage" in ancient stoicism, we should remember that stoic
> philosophy was more practical than theoretical. The techniques used will
> be the same, whether one is trying to limit grief enough to function, or
> to eliminate it altogether.
>
> Overall, we should never forget that Stoicism is primarily a way to live
> a good life. Whatever differences exist in the fine details of our
> theories, we share a common goal, and believe in t h e same means to
> achieve that goal. We have more in common than divides us.
*****
What you call modern scientific Stoicism has it's
own problem--in seeking to be practical, it becomes
incoherent.
If I should feel some grief at the death of a loved one, then the external event represented by the
loved one's death must be genuinely evil. Now we face
a host of problems--if their death is evil, then we isn't
the death of my neighbor evil? Is the guy down the street
any less important than my neighbor? How about someone in
Tibet? Something like 150,000 people die every day--should
I feel grief constantly? Millions of people are starving--
shouldn't I feel their pain? The system you describe is
no longer able to explain why "moderate grief" is OK but
debilitating grief is not--it becomes theoretically
incoherent. The Stoics were not so absorbed in "practical
life" that they didn't care whether their views were
incoherent. If you want a "rational" view of life, then
you need to iron out obvious inconsistencies....
Further, while I agree that we're seeking the good
life, for me that requires _virtue_ and not merely "freedom
from debilitating emotions". Modern science tells us
nothing about Virtue at all--indeed, I see no way at all
that the materialistic view you advocate can accept the
existence of moral values at all.
Regards,
Grant, the anti-mystical Dualistic Stoic
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