The Practicing Stoic. Ward Farnsworth

time and experience. They try to respond to temptations and hardships in about the way they might if they were experiencing them for the thousandth time; the recommended Stoic reaction to most things is the natural reaction of the veteran. This way of looking at Stoicism makes it less otherworldly. The philosophy can be considered an effort to help us toward the state of mind we might reach on our own with more time, rather than as an effort to make us less human. Looking at Stoicism this way also makes clear that the practicing Stoic isn’t unfeeling or uncaring. The Stoic responds to the suffering of others like a good doctor who has seen it all before: with activity and compassion, though probably without much emotion.b. Perfect Stoicism is no doubt impossible. The “wise man” held up as an example by the Stoics is best viewed as an ideal. It is meant to provide a direction rather than a destination. This shouldn’t be alarming. Many philosophical and religious traditions call on their aspirants to work toward an ideal that nobody quite attains. The question is not whether anyone gets to the end. It is whether we are helped by trying.c. Claims of Stoic hypocrisy usually arise from a misunderstanding of what Stoicism is for. Its purpose is to help those who use it, not to give them a basis for judgment of others. The exhortations of Stoic teachers sometimes create a different impression, but explaining Stoicism and practicing Stoicism are different activities. Stoicism may have to be taught if it is to be learned, but the practice of it involves thinking and acting, not preaching. If Stoicism inspires claims of hypocrisy against its students, the students are probably bad Stoics – not because their actions are impure, but because they are talking too much.

      The order of the chapters in this book mostly follows the order of the discussion above. Many discussions of Stoicism start instead with the definition and place of virtue in the philosophy. In this book that comes later – not because it is less important than what comes earlier, but because it is (I suggest) easier to follow once one understands the Stoic view of what reason means and requires, which is a theme developed in the earlier chapters. I say this so the reader will feel free to take what follows in whatever order is of interest, and not treat the sequence of topics as an argument of the Stoics or as an argument of mine. The order is proposed as useful, not at all as essential.

       The Practicing Stoic

Chapter One

      JUDGMENT

      The first principle of practical Stoicism is this: we don’t react to events; we react to our judgments about them, and the judgments are up to us. We will see the Stoics develop that idea in the pages to come, but this expression of it is typical:

      If any external thing causes you distress, it is not the thing itself that troubles you, but your own judgment about it. And this you have the power to eliminate now.

      Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.47

      The Stoic claim, in other words, is that our pleasures, griefs, desires and fears all involve three stages rather than two: not just an event and a reaction, but an event, then a judgment or opinion about it, and then a reaction (to the judgment or opinion). Our task is to notice the middle step, to understand its frequent irrationality, and to control it through the patient use of reason. This chapter starts with the noticing. Later chapters will talk about the irrationality and offer advice about control. We begin here because the point is foundational. Most of the rest of what the Stoics say depends on it. Soon we will hear from them about “externals,” desires, virtues, and much else. But it all begins with the idea that we construct our experience of the world through our beliefs, opinions, and thinking about it – in a word, through our judgments – and that they are up to us.

      For many students of Stoic philosophy, this first principle starts as counterintuitive, gradually becomes convincing, and finally seems obviously true – and then the cycle may be repeated, because the mind constantly gives us an opposite impression that appears convincing in its own right. Our reactions to whatever happens usually feel direct and spontaneous. They don’t seem to involve judgment at all, or at least no judgment that could ever be otherwise. The Stoics consider all this an illusion. The work of dispelling it is hard because the mind is an unreliable narrator of where our reactions come from. It tells us that we respond to externals – to things out there, not to the mind itself. It has to learn to see and describe its own role more accurately. Stoicism means to help us think better about our thinking, to teach the mind to understand the mind, to make the fish more aware of the water.

      The truth of the Stoic claim is easiest to see when we react to an offense given strictly to the mind. Suppose someone insults you. The insult is meaningless apart from what you make of it. If you are bothered, it must be because you care: a judgment. Instead you could decide not to care, and that would be the end of the insult for you. All irritations can be viewed the same way – the noisy neighbor, the bad weather, the traffic jam. If you are riled up by these things, you are riled up by the judgments you make about them: that they are bad, that they are important, that one should get riled up about them. The events don’t force you to think any of this; only you can do it. The same then goes for bigger setbacks, and for desires, fears, and all the rest of our mental events. We always feel as though we react to things in the world; in fact we react to things in ourselves. And sometimes changing ourselves will be more effective and sensible than trying to change the world.

      When we feel physical pain or pleasure, the role of the mind in forming our reaction is harder to see. Pains and pleasures seem like immovable facts that owe nothing to our thinking. But even then the Stoics insist that our judgments about those feelings produce our experience of them. Yes, pain is pain: a sensation that exists no matter what we think about it. But how much bother it causes, how much attention we pay to it, what it means to us – these are judgments, and all ours to determine. Pains and pleasures are made bigger or smaller by the way we talk to ourselves about them, or by judgments that are too deep to articulate but are nevertheless our own. We underrate the power of these judgments because we barely notice them. Stoics notice them. (For more discussion of pain in particular, see Chapter 10, Section 11.)

      The idea that our reactions depend on our judgments can seem especially strange if “judgments” are all imagined to be conscious and rational. But a judgment can take many forms. You conclude that spiders aren’t dangerous yet still are afraid of them; does this show that your fear is separate from any opinion you hold about spiders? No, it just means you have conflicting judgments – that spiders are safe and that they aren’t. The second will take time to uproot even after you decide it’s wrong. Put differently, some judgments are just things we say to ourselves, and those are the easier ones to fix. Others are ingrained and nonverbal. The Stoics will sometimes include under “judgments” everything that we bring to the world when we meet it – the appetite that we have or don’t have that makes a plate of food look better or worse, or a lifetime of conditioning that produces the same effect. These may not be easy to change. Here, then, is another reason why Stoicism is hard, and why nobody gets to perfection. Some reactions may belong to us and yet not quite be up to us. Or they are up to us in theory but we don’t have the psychological strength to change them.

      More broadly, the Stoics didn’t distinguish in their thinking as we now might between all the forms that our judgments can take – conscious opinions, unconscious attitudes, conditioned responses, chemical predispositions, genetic tendencies, and so on – and how some of those can be changed more easily than others. They do make a few such acknowledgments. The Stoics say that some reactions have a physical basis we can’t control. (See Chapter 9, Section 1.) And Seneca concedes that we are born with some temperamental features that can’t be changed. (See Chapter 10, Section 10.) But our ordinary reactions to things – our reactions at rest – are viewed mostly just as ours to control with practice. Anyone can see how difficult this idea would be to carry out in full; just think of your own strongest likes and dislikes, and how hard it would be to reverse them with any amount of thinking. But fortunately, and importantly, Stoicism doesn’t care what our tastes are, and doesn’t call for reversal of our aversions