Stoicism On Fire

Set before your eyes every day death and exile and everything else that looks terrible, especially death. Then you will never have any mean thought or be too keen on anything. (Ench 21) That’s an interesting list: death, exile, and everything else that looks terrible. We can all relate to death and other things that look terrible. However, there is no modern equivalent to Roman exile. To full appreciate the inclusion of exile in this list, we need to understand that exile was a form of capital punishment under Roman law. It was an alternative to the death penalty. Sometimes, a person was allowed to choose exile instead of being put to death. That was considered voluntary exile. In other cases, people were banished and involuntarily removed from Roman territories. Musonius Rufus, Epictetus, and Seneca were all exiled at different times. It was not uncommon for philosophers to be exiled because they were often considered a threat to those in power. Why? Because philosophy taught people to think for themselves and have an allegiance to truth instead of political authority. We don’t fear exile today. Those with political power or far-reaching social influence may fear getting canceled in modern times. For some, that may be just as frightening as exile was in ancient times. Nevertheless, I suspect the list of terrible things in Encheiridion 21 would be different if Epictetus were teaching today. He might say: Set before your eyes every day death and social ostracism, pandemics, government lockdowns, inflation, high gas prices, exploding houses costs, recession, the war in Ukraine, mass immigration, mass shootings, high crime, racism, sexism, and everything else that looks terrible, especially death. Then you will never have any mean thought or be too keen on anything. The last sentence of Encheiridion 21 offers two extremes we can avoid if we practice setting death and everything else that looks terrible before our eyes daily. However, the phrase “mean thought” seemed a little vague to me, so I looked at every translation of the Encheiridion I have to see if they would provide some insight. Have any mean thought be too keen on anything A.A. Long Have any abject thought Yearn for anything W.A. Oldfather Harbour any mean thought Desire anything beyond due measure Robin Hard Entertain any abject thought Long for anything excessively Keith Seddon Think of anything mean Desire anything extravagantly George Long Have any abject thought Desire anything to excess Robert Dobbin Do you see the pattern here? In this passage, Epictetus is referring to aversions and desires. This lesson is another, among many, in which Epictetus reminds us that true freedom is internal. Freedom cannot be dependent on externals. When we fear external events and circumstances, we tend to blame others. We blame the other political party, another race of people, the opposite sex, those who have what we think we deserve, those with religious beliefs and lifestyles different from ours, etc. Those aversions tend to create abject and mean thoughts toward others. Likewise, those aversions typically entail excess desires for circumstances to be different. Before anyone concludes that Epictetus is preaching quietism here, look at the language. Epictetus did not instruct his student not to desire a change in circumstances. The English translations tell us not to be too keen on anything, yearn for anything, desire anything beyond measure, desire anything in excess, etc. As Stoics, we should desire and work for change leading toward a virtuous end. However, if your desire for change produces mean and abject thoughts toward those who disagree with you, you are a slave to your passions. You desire something excessively when you allow yourself to hate others you believe are preventing you from attaining it. Lesson 1 So, what is the message of Encheiridion 21? I think we can derive two important lessons from...

The doctrine that the world is a living being, rational, animate and intelligent, is laid down by Chrysippus in the first book of his treatise On Providence, by Apollodorus in his Physics, and by Posidonius… And it is endowed with soul, as is clear from our several souls being each a fragment of it. (DL 7.142-3)[1] Some people think the idea of a conscious cosmos is an antiquated relic of ancient Stoicism that we must abandon in light of modern science. However, numerous modern scientists and philosophers describe the nature of the cosmos in ways that are compatible with the intuitions of the ancient Stoics. Some now suggest consciousness must be a fundamental aspect of the cosmos and refer to a mind-like background in the universe. A few boldly claim the universe is conscious, just as the Stoic did more than two thousand years ago. Modern thinkers frequently label this idea panpsychism, which entails consciousness as a fundamental aspect of the cosmos. When we consider a concept like a conscious cosmos and relate it to ancient Stoicism, we first must acknowledge that the Greeks did not have a word for conscious. The word first appears in English in the seventeenth century. Next, we must admit that many definitions of consciousness exist today. The ancient Stoics argued the cosmos is a living being (organism) that is rational, animate, and intelligent. I cannot imagine an entity that meets all those criteria we would deny is conscious. Instead of a conscious cosmos, we could say a rational, animate, and intelligent cosmos; however, that will not appease those who believe the universe is mechanistic, reductive to matter, and governed by laws that just happen, accidentally, to be conducive to life as we know it here on Earth. Therefore, the term conscious serves quite well as a substitute for a living being (organism) that is rational, animate, and intelligent. The ancient Stoics considered their unique conception of a conscious, providentially ordered cosmos a necessary element of their holistic philosophical system. They did so for good reasons. Today, Traditional Stoics think this conception of the cosmos is still viable. First, despite the objections offered by those who adhere to the metaphysical assumptions of the current scientific orthodoxy, there is no objective scientific reason to abandon the conscious cosmos of Stoicism. More importantly, Stoic practice relies on the essential relationship between the way the world is (physics) and the way we should act in the world (ethics). Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoa, argued that universal nature is the source of our knowledge of virtue, good and evil, and happiness. Further, according to Plutarch, Chrysippus asserted, “physical theory turns out to be ‘at once before and behind’ ethics.”[2] As I have written before, the conscious and providential cosmos is the soul of the Stoic philosophical system. Speaking of soul, the ancient Stoics believed the cosmos has a soul, and it is God. As Plutarch notes: In his On providence book 1 [Chrysippus] says: ‘When the world is fiery through and through, it is directly both its own soul and commanding-faculty.[3] Unfortunately, many people recoil, almost reflexively, from the concept of a conscious cosmos because it entails some form of intelligence that preexists human consciousness. They mistakenly assume such a concept necessarily invokes a supernatural divinity akin to those of traditional monotheistic religions. Likewise, many people are unaware of the increasing number of scientists and thinkers breaking out of the pre-twentieth-century, mechanistic, materialist, reductionist box and arguing that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of reality. I will highlight a few of those thinkers shortly. Consciousness was ignored by the mainstream hard sciences, including psychology, at the beginning of the twentieth century. Science could not explain consciousness via reductive materialism; therefore,

Keep in mind that what injures you is not people who are rude or aggressive but your opinion that they are injuring you. So whenever someone provokes you, be aware that the provocation really comes from your own judgment. Start, then, by trying not to get carried away by the impression. Once you pause and give yourself time, you will more easily control yourself. (Ench 20)   Full transcript coming soon.

Let your every action, word, and thought be those of one who could depart from life at any moment. (Meditations 2.11) I cannot find a more fitting passage to describe the last few months of Dirk Mahling's life. Dirk departed from this life last Friday after a hard-fought battle with cancer. He was the President of New Stoa, a tutor, and mentor to many students at the College of Stoic Philosophers since 2016. Additionally, Dirk is one of several people who worked hard to keep the College alive when the founding Scholarch retired last year. He was bright, humorous, courageous, and a dedicated Stoic who was full of life to the end. Dirk was a friend, a colleague, and, more than anyone I know personally, an example of what it means to face death as a Stoic. Dirk told me about his terminal cancer diagnosis last August when I returned to the College of Stoic Philosophers after a long sabbatical. At that time, he thought he might have as many as two years left. He told me his challenge was figuring out how to live the rest of his life in that time. He didn’t appear sick in August; he looked like the Dirk I had known since 2015 when I mentored him through the Stoic Essential Studies course. I mentored many students at the college, but only a handful stand out in my memory. Dirk was undoubtedly one of those. When I returned to the College last year to discover he was the President of New Stoa, I teased him about being one of my most challenging students. He was bright and questioned everything. I enjoyed the challenge, and we had a great time together in the course. Dirk’s sense of humor was unbounded. His essay responses to lessons almost always included comics, memes, and humorous comments. In the Ethics lesson, he included a photo of Oikos yogurt with his essay response about the Stoic doctrine of oikeiosis. His answer to the question, “How do we become cosmopolitan?” was, “by reading Cosmo…” and he inserted a picture of a Cosmopolitan magazine cover. Yes, he also provided a correct answer. That was Dirk’s way of keeping Stoic philosophy fun and lite. He also included a comic with particular meaning as we consider Dirk’s life and death as a Stoic. The comic depicts two men in togas standing next to a grave. The headstone reads, “R.I.P. Zeno the philosopher—dead, but so what? The quote from one of the two characters underneath the comic reads, “He was a Stoic’s Stoic.” Dirk knew his end was near, but I certainly did not predict it was so close based on his behavior. He remained active at the College until the end and recently volunteered to mentor two students through the next term of the Marcus Aurelius Program beginning April 1st. He even joined the College faculty on our monthly Zoom conference call five days before he passed. Dirk was on oxygen during the meeting and told us he needed it because he gets short of breath when he talks. Dirk dedicated himself to the College’s mission of teaching students about Stoicism, and he remained at his post until the Captain called. To me, it appeared Dirk was living the practice of memento mori. Like Marcus Aurelius, Dirk did not fear death. Marcus wrote: In human life, the time of our existence is a point, our substance a flux, our senses dull, the fabric of our entire body subject to corruption, our soul ever restless, our destiny beyond divining, and our fame precarious. In a word, all that belongs to the body is a stream in flow, all that belongs to the soul, mere dream and delusion, and our life is a war, a brief stay in a foreign land, and our fame thereafter, oblivion. So what can serve as our escort and guide? One thing and one alone, philosophy; and that consists in keeping the guardian-spirit within us inviolate and free from harm, and ever superior to pleasure and pain, and ensuring that it does nothing at random and nothing with false intent or pretence, and that it is not dependent on another’s doing or not doing some particular thing,