Zeno of Citium Chrysippus Epictetus , Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius Stoa Poikilê

Zeno of Citium Chrysippus Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius StoaPoikilê

The Stoic conception of the sage was nothing less than the ideal of a perfect individual, an individual described in terms that were usually reserved only for the gods. The sage is described in a variety of sources as one who does everything that he undertakes well, one who is never impeded in what he does, one who is infallible; he is more powerful than all others, richer, stronger, freer, happier… (p. 60)

The Stoic choice is thus situated in the direct line of the Socratic choice, and is diametrically opposed to the Epicurean choice: happiness consists not in pleasure or in an individual interest but in the demands of the good, which are dictated by reason and transcend the individual (WAP? p. 127).

A necessity which is inexorable and indifferent to our individual interest breaks our aspirations and our hopes; we are helpless and defenceless in the face of the accidents of life, the setbacks of fortune, illness, and death. Everything in our life escapes us. (ibid.).

To live coherently – that is, according to a rule of life which is unique and harmonious. For those who live in incoherence are unhappy (p. 128).

apatheia (freedom from passion) and eupatheiai(good feelings). impressions (phantasiai)

On the one hand, there are things that are in our power, whereas other things are not in power. In our power are opinion, impulse, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is our own doing. Things not in our power include our body, our possessions, our reputations, our status, and, in a word, whatever is not our own doing.

Remember that the insult does not come from the person who abuses you or hits you, but from your judgement that such people are insulting you. Therefore, whenever someone provokes you, be aware that it is your own opinion that provokes you. Try, therefore, in the first place, not to be carried away by your impressions, for if you can gain time and delay, you will more easily control yourself (Handbook 20).

Will you be angry and discontented with the ordinances of Zeus, which he, with the Fates who spun in his presence the thread of your destiny at the time of your birth, ordained and appointed? (Discourses 1.12.25) Lead me, Zeus, and you too, Destiny, Wherever you have assigned me to go…Whosoever properly with necessity complies we say is wise , and understands things divine’.

Remembering then this disposition of things, we ought to go to be instructed, not that we may change the constitution of things, - for we have not the power to do it, nor is it better that we should have the power, - but in order that, as the things around us are what they are and by nature exist, we may maintain our minds in harmony with the things which happen (Discourses 1.12.15-17).

Who are you, and for what purpose have you come? Was it not he [God] who brought you here?...And as what did he bring you here? Was it not as a mortal? Was it not as one who would live, with a little portion of flesh, upon this earth, and behold his governance and take part with him, for a short time, in his pageant and his festival. So why note enjoy the feast and pageant while it’s given you to do so; then, when he ushers you out, go with thanks and reverence for what you were privilege for a time to see and hear (Discourses 4.1.104).

1) We need to become self-aware, observing ourselves as we go about our daily life and reflect on the day’s events: how did we respond to an insult? To the loss of a valued possession? To a stressful situation? In our responses did we put to work Stoic psychological strategies? 2) We need to deploy or reasoning abilities to conquer negative emotions and master our desires (or to the extent that this is possible). We need to convince ourselves that external goods, such as fame and fortune, are matters of indifference to us: that if we seek tranquillity these things are not worth the trouble and worth having. 3) If in our spite of not having pursued it we find ourselves in a situation with lots of wealth we should enjoy our affluence (the Stoics don’t advocate asceticism, unlike the Cynics): but although we ought to enjoy our wealth we should not cling to it; and even whilst we have it we should contemplate its loss.

4) We need to know the sources of our unhappiness, such as our insatiability and our tendency to worry about things beyond our control; we can develop techniques for removing these sources of discontent from our lives. For example, we can engage in negative visualisation in which we contemplate the impermanence of all things. We can imagine ourselves losing those things we consider the most valuable, including possessions and loved ones. We can even imagine the loss of our own life. Doing this may help us come to appreciate what we do have in our existence and not covet other things we don’t have. Also, not only can we imagine that things could be worse than they actually are, we should sometimes cause thins to be worse than they would otherwise be, e.g. practising poverty and forgoing opportunities for pleasure and comfort. 5) We should be fatalistic with respect to the external world, realising that what has happened to us in the past and what is happening to us at this very moment are beyond our control (it is thus foolish to get upset about these things). However, with regards to fate4 the Stoics did not advocate fatalism with respect to the future, which would lead to complete inactivity and resigned to whatever may come our way.

Nietzsche seems to be advocating something similar to this when in a Nachlass note he writes: • Before fate strikes us, we should lead it like a child and – show it the whip: but once it has struck us, then we should seek to love it (KSA 10:5[1]194 10.208)

…we need to distinguish between fatalism with respect to the future and fatalism with respect to the past…Thus, the Stoics would not counsel a mother with a sick child to be fatalistic with respect to the future; she should try to nurse the child back to health (even though the Fates have already decided whether the child lives or dies). But if the child dies, they will counsel this woman to be fatalistic with respect to the past. It is only natural, even for a Stoic, to experience grief after the death of a child. But to dwell on that death is a waste of time and emotions, inasmuch as the past cannot be changed. Dwelling on the child’s death will therefore cause the woman needless grief (p. 104).

…the will for self-coherence, which is the basis of the Stoic choice, appears as a fundamental law within material reality, internal to each being and to the totality of beings. From the first moment of their existence, living beings are instinctively in tune with themselves; they strive to preserve themselves, and they love their own existence and everything that can preserve it. Yet the world itself is also one single living being which is likewise in tune with itself and self-coherent…everything in the world is related to everything else, all is in all, and everything needs everything else (pp. 128-9).

The answer is that the form of reason proper to human beings is not universal Reason – the substantial, formative reason which is immediately immanent within things. Instead, it is discursive reason, which has the power, in judgments and in the discourses it enunciates about reality, to give meaning to the events which Fate imposes upon it and the actions it produces. Human passions, as well as morality, are situated within this universe of meaning (p. 131).

Do not try to make things happen the way you want, but want what happens to happen the way it happens, and you will be happy (Epictetus cited in Hadot p. 133).

A living being has an instinctive original accord with itself, and this expresses the deepest will of nature. • Living beings have an innate tendency to preserve themselves and to repel whatever threatens their integrity. • Human reason makes natural instinct something reflective: things are chosen because they respond to natural tendencies, such as the love of life and children, or love of one’s fellow citizens based on the instinct of sociability. • This means for the Stoics that there are actions that are appropriate to our human nature and so have value, such as the act of marriage, or the desire to be politically active and serve the ends of one’s country, etc. • These ‘appropriate actions’ partly depend on us – they are actions that suppose a moral intention – and partly do not depend on us because their success depends obviously not on our will alone but also on other people, on circumstances, and fate.

This theory of duties or appropriate actions allows philosophers to orient themselves in the uncertainty of everyday life by proposing probable choices which our reason can approve, although it is never absolutely certain that it is acting correctly. What counts, after all, is not the result of our actions, for this is always uncertain; nor is it effectiveness. Instead, it is the intention of doing good. The Stoic always acts ‘under reserve’: he tells himself, ‘I want to do X, if Fate permits’. If Fate does not permit it, he will try to succeed in some other way, or else he will accept Fate by ‘willing what happens’ (p. 134).

‘to enable a human being to face all the blows of fate (Schicksalsschläge) with equal firmness, to arm him for all times’ (KSA 7, 30 [25]).

The Stoic’s fundamental attitude is this continuous attention, which means constant tension and consciousness, as well as vigilance exercised at every moment. Thanks to this attention, the philosopher is always perfectly aware not only of what he is doing, but also of what he is thinking and of what he is – in other words, of his place within the cosmos. This is lived physics…(p. 138).

Its self-consciousness is a moral consciousness that seeks at every moment to purify our intentions. The motive for action should be nothing other than the will to do good. • This self-consciousness, however, is not and cannot be simply moral; it is in addition a cosmic and rational consciousness. When we are properly ‘attentive’ we live in the presence of universal Reason (that which is immanent within the cosmos) and we see all things from its perspective, joyfully consenting to its will.

A wise man never complains of the destiny of Providence, nor thinks the universe in confusion when he is out of order. He does not look upon himself as a whole, separated and detached from every other part of nature, to be taken care of by itself and for itself. He regards himself in the light in which he imagines the great genius of human nature, and of the world, regards him…he considers himself as an atom, a particle, of an immense and infinite system, which must and ought to be disposed of, according to the conveniency of the whole. Assured of the wisdom which directs all the events of human life, whatever lots befalls him, he accepts it with joy, satisfied that, if he had known all the connections and dependencies of the different parts of the universe, it is the very lot which he himself would have wished for (Penguin edition, p. 327).

Attention to the present moment: this is all that is within our control and it is pointless to worry about what does not reside in one’s control. • Memorisation of key principles: philosophy is to be cultivated as something that is kept at hand and close at hand (encheiron), in cases of need. The title of Epictetus’s ‘Manual’ or ‘Handbook’, the Enchiridion, means ‘in the hand’ or ‘ready to hand’. • Exercises for body and soul: accustoming body to cold, heat, thirst, hunger, scarcity of food, hardness of bed, abstinence from pleasures, enduring pains; Exercises for the mind: keeping principles at hand, notably key Stoic distinction of what is and is not in our control. • Premeditation of death and of evils: this is not because the Stoics were unduly morbid but because they saw wisdom in lessening the shock-impact of the hard facts of life. It results in lessening the effects of misfortune, and enhanced ability to cope with and manage stress and duress, and so on. • Physics as spiritual exercise: it is necessary to understand the workings of the universe if we are to be rational agents; it also enables us to learn not to be shocked, awed, or surprised by inevitable and natural events. • The view from above: principal exemplar of physics as spiritual exercise so as to relativise our passion-shaped evaluations of things. We need to elevate our minds to a cosmic consciousness.

As Nietzsche puts it in a note from 1881: • Stop feeling oneself as this phantasticego (ego)!...Discover the errors of the ego!...Get beyond ‘me’ and ‘you’! Learn to feel (empfinden) cosmically! (KSA 9, 11 [7], p. 443)

“You say that the morality of being compassionate is a higher morality (Moral) than that of Stoicism? Prove it! But remember that what is ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ in morality is not, in turn to be measured by a moral yardstick: for there is no absolute morality (Moral). So take your rule from somewhere else – and now beware!” (Nietzsche 2011, 139)

If, as Pascal and Christianity claim, our ego (Ich) is always hateful, how might we possibly ever allow or assume that someone else could love it – be it God or a human being! It would go against all decency to let oneself be loved knowing full well that one only deserves hate – not to mention other feelings of repulsion. - ‘But this is precisely the kingdom of mercy’. – So is your love-thy-neighbour mercy? Your compassion mercy? Well, if these things are possible for you, go still one step further: love yourselves out of mercy – then you won’t need your God any more at all, and the whole drama of original sin and redemption will play itself out to the end in you yourselves (Nietzsche 2011, 79).

‘Trust your feelings!’ But feelings are nothing final or original – behind feelings there stand judgements and evaluations which we inherit in the form of feelings. What Stoicism in particular seemed to offer Nietzsche was precisely a model of philosophical therapy that could eradicate or soothe those negative passions that arise from the human creature’s dependence on uncontrollable events and, as a materialist philosophy, could achieve this end without relying on belief in the metaphysical transcendence of the natural world. In Stoic materialism he saw a desire to make happiness (eudaimonia) available to all, within this world, which is not opposed to any superior world (JNS 2009, p. 67).

The will of nature may be learned from those things in which we do not differ from one another. For instance, when our neighbour’s little slave boy has broken a cup, we are at once ready to say, ‘Such things do happen’. Realise, then, that when your own cup is broken you should be just the same as you were when another’s cup was broken. Transfer the same principle to greater things. Is the child or wife of another dead? There is no one who would not say, ‘Such is the human lot’. But when one’s own child dies, it is all at once, ‘Alas! How wretched I am!’ But we should have remembered how we react when we hear of this happening to others.

To view our own experiences with the eyes which we are accustomed to view them when they are the experiences of others – this is very comforting and a medicine to be recommended. On the other hand, to view and imbibe the experience of others as if they were ours – as is the demand of the philosophy of Mitleid – this would destroy us…the former maxim is certainly more in accord with reason and the will to rationality, for we adjudge the value and meaning of an event more objectively when it happens to another than we do when it happens to us: the value, for example, of a death…

Like all the Hellenistic philosophers, Nietzsche seems to have arrived at the view that the source of our misery is not to be found in things, but in the value judgements that we bring to bear upon things and we can be cured of our ills only through a change in our value judgements (p. 72).

Pleasure and displeasure are so intertwined that whoever wants as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other – that whoever wants to learn to ‘jubilate up to the heavens’ must also be prepared for ‘grief unto death’.

…Nietzsche remains committed to the Hellenistic therapeutic model of philosophy, its concept of spiritual exercises, and much of the Stoic theory of the emotions, but he rejects the Hellenistic school’s belief that the goal of therapy, which we might describe as the affirmation of fate, can only be achieved through a wholesale eradication of the passions/emotions...he came to recognise that insofar as strictly speaking the Hellenistic therapies entailed a commitment to achieving eudaimonia through the extirpation of almost all the emotions, and that he had rejected this as a defensible normative end, he needed to develop an alternative philosophical therapy (Ure p. 73).

…Its basic motifs are paralysis and coldness, hence a form of anaesthesia. The principal aim of Stoic edification is to eliminate any inclination to excitement, continually to lessen the number of things that might offer enticement, to awaken distaste for and to belittle the value of most things that offer stimulation, to hate excitement as an enemy; indeed, to hate the passions themselves as if they were a form of disease or something entirely unworthy; for they are the hallmarks of every despicable and painful manifestation of suffering. In summa: turning oneself into stone as a weapon against suffering and in the future conferring all worthy names of divine-like virtues upon a state. …If a Stoic attains the character he seeks – for the most part he already possesses this character and therefore chooses this philosophy – the loss of feeling reached is the result of the pressure of a tourniquet. I am very antipathetic to this line of thinking. It undervalues that value of pain (it is as useful and necessary as pleasure), the value of stimulation and suffering. It is finally compelled to say: everything that happens is acceptable to me; nothing is to be different. There are no needs over which it triumphs because it has killed the passion for needs. All of this is expressed in religious terms as a complete acceptance of God’s actions (for example, Epictetus) (KSA 9, 15 [55], pp. 652-3; cited in Elveton p. 200).

In truth, the matter is quite different: whilst you (Stoics) pretend rapturously to read the canon of your law in nature, you want something opposite, you strange actors and self-deceivers! Your pride wants to impose your morality, your ideal, on nature…

Zeno of Citium Chrysippus Epictetus , Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius Stoa Poikilê