Grant C. Sterling on What Makes a Stoic

 

Post by Grant C. Sterling. Originally posted to the International Stoic Forum, May 24, 2021.

Grant C. Sterling on What Makes a Stoic

International Stoic Forum — May 24, 2021

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All:

Of course, you’ve heard this before. Steve was brief…I’ll be brief as well. Of course, I’m incapable of being anywhere close to as brief as Steve.

“Being a Stoic” is not an objective factual matter, like being over 6’ tall. It requires people to develop criteria.

Suppose someone agrees with everything Karl Marx said (for simplicity, let’s pretend that h⁰e was completely consistent in his beliefs). There would be no rational doubt, then, whether or not he was a “Marxist”. But suppose he didn’t agree with Marx’s view of religion — suppose, in fact, that he was a Christian. Is he still a “Marxist”? It depends on how important you think Marx’s view of religion is to his philosophical system. I, personally, think that the answer is “of course he is”. I think the heart and soul of Marx’s philosophy is his view on economics, specifically things like the labor theory of value, the ultimate superiority of communism, etc. If this man believes those things (even if they have to be fitted into the rest of his system differently than Marx fit them into his, since Marx’s system included different religious ideas), then he’s a Marxist.

{You may have different standards. But this is not entirely an arbitrary, subjective matter — I would say that someone who calls someone a “Marxist” entirely on the basis of whether or not the person shares Marx’s views on, say, Judaism was being irrational. But there is certainly a subjective element.}

(I just had this exact discussion about Christianity. What do you have to believe, in order to count as a “Christian”? Do non-Trinitarians qualify? Those who deny the existence of Hell? Etc.)

So unless someone believes 100% of the things that the Stoics believed, we’ll have to decide what is so central and distinctive of Stoicism that it should count as a defining feature, and what shouldn’t count. And since the “Stoics” didn’t agree with each other about 100% of things, then we either say there never were any Stoics, or we’ll have to define what is required to be “in”. (This doesn’t have to be a list of necessary and sufficient conditions. It can be a list of distinctive ideas, and someone counts as a Stoic if they agree with 80% of them or something.)

I think that what is truly central, important, and distinctive of Stoicism is the moral psychology. The theory of what things are good, of the origin of emotions, of eudaimonia, etc. So I think someone who believes those things is a Stoic. I do not pretend that this is 100% of the things that the ancient Stoics believed. But I think it was what set the Stoics apart from other philosophers throughout history. And my view is not idiosyncratic — I’ll bet that if you look at the cases where someone has been described as being a “Stoic”, after you sort out the cases where the term is being used in its colloquial sense (someone who doesn’t display much emotion), you’ll find that 99% of the time it’s based on those characteristics. Stand up at a philosophy convention and say “what philosophical system do I follow?”, and then start reciting those characteristics. People will say “Stoicism”, without waiting to hear whether you believe in cataleptic impressions or pantheism.

You can have a different set of criteria if you want to. I don’t object. But be careful — I don’t think Epictetus was a pantheist, for example. If you make pantheism essential to Stoicism, then Epictetus wasn’t a Stoic. Chrysippus was a strict determinist. I’m not sure which other Stoics were strict determinists, but I’ll bet not all of them were. (Again, I have doubts about Epictetus, for one.) Is determinism central? Cataleptic impressions? Belief in fiery pneuma? You can end up defining “Stoicism” in such a way that no living person would ever want to be one. I think that’s unhelpful — your mileage may vary.

Regards,
GCS