The heart of Stoicism

Wherever we betake ourselves, two things that are most admirable will go with us—universal nature and our own virtue.

—Seneca, De Consolatione Ad Marciam

At the heart of Stoicism lies a radical revaluation of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ that depends not on particular external things and events, but instead arises from the realisation of one’s own intimate participation in the Universal.  From this vision of the Whole and the cultivation of one’s relationship with the Whole comes virtue.

Mortality and the cultivation of virtue

Things not under our control the Stoics placed into a category that they called indifferents.  The term indifferent can be misleading and often gives rise to the stereotype of the Stoic who is unfeeling and completely unfazed by the unfolding of surrounding events (which suggests something more like unhealthy denial or repression).  It can also suggest, wrongly, that for the Stoic, those things out of our control are simply cast aside carelessly.  The indifferents, while they do not possess ultimate significance, are still treated as important responsibilities for the Stoic (to do otherwise would suggest more the attitude of the Cynic instead).

But the Stoic’s relation to the indifferents is not merely a matter of indifference, ignorance, denial or carelessness.  Viewed positively, the proper Stoic attitude is to accept all indifferents equally, and letting them all go just as equally—each in its due time, ‘according to Nature,’ as the Stoic saying goes:

The Universe too loves to create what is to be.  Therefore I say to the Universe: ‘Your love is mine.’

–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book X.21 

The Stoic knows the indifferents are not of ultimate significance because virtue does not depend on those things out of our control.  Understanding the proper placement of the indifferents, however, is significant.  Virtue does not arise in a vacuum but rather results from the Stoic properly relating to the things under our control and those things not under our control.  Virtue then is the result of a certain philosophical engagement with the world, and in this process, one discovers her own role to play in the Whole.  This engagement is a dynamic process, since the world likewise is in continual flux—and so one’s role in relation to the Whole may change from one moment to the next.

With this understanding of the indifferents in mind, I’d like to turn to one indifferent in particular: death.  The existential realisation of one’s own mortality is a crucial first step in philosophia.  It is often said in Stoicism that one should ‘live each day as if it were your last.’  Such an attitude toward mortality is a useful means in cultivation of virtue:

Don’t live as though you were going to live a myriad years.  Fate is hanging over your head; while you have life, while you may, become good.

–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, VI.17

Without the realisation of one’s own mortality, why would anyone even bother with philosophia?  And yet there are many people who fear death and do not live each as if it were their last:

Our confidence ought, therefore, to be turned toward death, and our caution toward the fear of death; whereas we do just the opposite—in the face of death we turn to flight, but about the formation of a judgement on death we show carelessness, disregard, and unconcern.

–Epictetus, Discourses, Book II.1

The existential realisation of one’s own mortality simply puts all things into proper perspective, with the aim of focusing the individual’s cultivation of virtue, which only takes place in the present moment:

Even were you about to live three thousand years or thrice ten thousand, nevertheless remember this, that no one loses any other life than this which he is living, nor lives any other than this which he is losing.  Thus the longest and the shortest come to the same thing.  For the present is equal for all, and what is passing is therefore equal: thus what is being lost is proved to be barely a moment.  For a man could lose neither past nor future; how could one rob him of what he has not got?

–Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book II.14

Of lemons and lemonade

What follows is always organically related to what went before; for it is not like a simple enumeration of units separately determined by necessity, but a rational combination; and as Being is arranged in a mutual co-ordination, so the phenomena of Becoming display no bare succession but a wonderful organic interrelation. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV.45

A central theme in Stoic philosophy is the beneficence of the cosmos.  Today we might think this strange, seeing that the world is full of mishaps, crimes and disasters, great and small.  How then is it possible to view the universe as beneficent or providential?

Whereas people conventionally apply the terms ‘good’ and ‘evil’ to things or events external to oneself, Stoics like Epictetus made a sharp distinction between ‘the things under our control’ and ‘the things not under our control.’  The Stoics relegated ‘the things not under our control’ to the category of ‘indifferent.’ 

Seneca, in his essay On Providence, sums up Stoicism succinctly: ‘Not what you endure, but how you endure, is important.’  ‘How you endure’ corresponds with Epictetus’ category of ‘things under our control.’  For the Stoics, it is only within this restricted compass that good and evil are found.  It is up to the individual how daily situations are judged and handled, regardless of what those situations might be. 

As with this Stoic doctrine regarding good and evil, providence likewise pertains to the same narrow range of ‘things within our control.’  The Stoic attitude toward life implies that all things work for the good of the Whole.  Only insofar as one realises oneself existentially as an expression of the Whole does one also realise the beneficence of the Whole.  It is for this reason that Marcus Aurelius says, ‘Love only what falls to your lot and is destined for you; what is more suited to you than that?’ (Meditations, Book VII.57)

One could speak here of a mystical dimension of Stoicism.  At each moment and every instant, we must say ‘yes’ to the universe; that is, to the will of universal reason.  We must want that which universal reason wants: that is, the present instant, exactly as it is.

—Pierre Hadot, ‘“Only the Present is our Happiness,”’ Philosophy as a Way of Life (pg. 230)

Reason (logos) is what the cosmos as a whole and the individual (being an expression of the Whole) both hold in common.  Epictetus calls this reasoning faculty a gift from the gods:

As was fitting, therefore, the gods have put under our control only the most excellent faculty of all and that which dominates the rest, namely, the power to make correct use of external impressions, but all the others they have not put under our control.

—Epictetus, Discourses, Book I.1

It is in this context that the Stoics looked to Socrates as a model for the Sage, who (according to Plato) said, ‘No evil can come to a good man.’  ‘Disaster is Virtue’s opportunity,’ Seneca wrote some two thousand years ago.  Or, as we might say today, ‘When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.’
 

Deus sive Natura

In a comment in the previous post, regarding Marcus Aurelius, Joshua wrote:

...I wonder how much the Christian translators inserted “God” over the years from the original and how close the manuscripts we're using are to the original. Meditations uses universe, God, gods, logos almost all seemingly interchangeably, but I wonder if there is not more to it than that.

The word ‘god’ carries such a different sense in our post-Christian world and it is easy to superimpose this cultural outlook on the polytheistic world of antiquity.  And this is true also of Stoic pantheism.  The ancients didn't get ideologically worked up about their god(s) as, say, the Christians later became.  In the Greco-Roman world, if the meaning of life was something you wanted to inquire into, you didn't turn to religion, but to philosophia—‘the love of widsom.’ 

The Stoics understood theos or deus to be identical to the entirety of all that is.  And sometimes this theistic language is used by the Stoics rather carelessly: living a virtuous life was more important than theological correctness that became the obsession of the early Church.  In general, I think it is helpful to remember that, just as in Spinoza, ‘god’ should be read in the Stoics as interchangeable with the whole of nature (‘Deus sive Natura’). 

Constantly think of the Universe as one living creature, embracing one being and one soul; how all is absorbed into the one consciousness of this living creature; how it encompasses all things with a single purpose, and how all things work together to cause all that to comes to pass, and their wonderful web and texture.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV.40 (translated by A.S.L. Farquharson)

This other side of the pantheistic coin, ‘Nature,’ ‘Cosmos,’ or ‘the Whole’ might be more relevant for some today, especially when the belief in theism appears increasingly incredulous and irrelevant (as for myself, I have been an atheist for a little over a decade).  Stoic pantheism implies that the universe is inherently sacred, rather than a deity separate from it.  For better or for worse, Christianity de-divinised the cosmos, placing the Divine outside the world, removed from it. 

It is less a matter of Christian terminology injected into Stoic discourse than it is a matter of a Christian mis-reading of a pre-Christian philosophy (think also of how easily some people mis-read 18th century Deism in the same way).  And so we should remain aware of those potential superimpositions and seek instead to recapture, as much as possible, the original spirit of ancient Stoicism.

To live according to nature

Always remember the following: what the nature of the Whole is; what is my own nature; the relation of this nature to that; what kind of part it is of what kind of Whole; and that no man can hinder your saying and doing at all times what is in accordance with that Nature whereof you are a part. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, II.9

The motto of Stoic philosophy is, as Seneca mentions more than once, ‘to live according to nature’ (secundum naturam vivere).  What exactly did the Stoics mean by  ‘nature’? 

Traditionally, Stoic ontology is materialistic and monistic: the universe is ultimately made of a single, material substance.  Stoics used the terms ‘nature” and ‘God’ interchangeably (which resembles more the kind of pantheism of Spinoza).  There is no ‘outside” or ‘beyond’ the cosmos, nothing super-natural—the Stoic model of the universe is entirely self-contained.  God, as defined by classical theism, has no place in Stoic thought. As for myself, I prefer to simply use the term the Whole, as Marcus Aurelius sometimes used.

According to the Stoics, human beings are a part of the cosmos, and as such, we should imitate the whole of the cosmos, rather than see ourselves as somehow separate from it.  Nature then is seen as an organic unity and it is when we strive against that unity (thinking ourselves as separate beings rather than integrated), we are fighting a futile battle, only tiring ourselves out, making ourselves miserable in the process.  What Marcus Aurelius is suggesting in the passage above then is that we take a bigger view of things.

And so, ‘to live according to the nature’ means to realise oneself as an expression of the Whole, rather than in terms of a fragmentary being struggling against other fragmentary beings.  While there are many of other debatable aspects of what the Stoics referred to as physics, the implications of this fundamental ontological view of the cosmos is essential for understanding Stoic ethics.