"Stoicism’s advice to steel yourself against the possibility of pain by killing your capacity to value. This is a recipe for destroying any possibility for happiness"
"Over the past decade, the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism has seen renewed public attention... There are good reasons, however, to steer clear of Stoicism as a philosophy of life...
"Popular treatments of Stoicism universally stress the Stoics’ point that some things are 'up to us' and other things are not up to us, and that it’s crucially important to distinguish correctly between these... The problem, however, is that Stoicism endorses determinism — the view that our actions and choices are necessitated by factors beyond our control. So, strictly speaking, nothing is up to us. And if nothing is up to us, what use is ... anyone’s advice ... ? There is no philosophically consistent answer to that question, except: 'None whatsoever' ...
"Stoic philosophy leaves us with no causal power to impact events, only at best the ability (so far unexplained) to voluntarily accept our leash and accommodate ourselves to the inevitable. This may provide a false sense of solace to some, but it isn’t exactly an empowering perspective on life.
"For a philosophy to be useful as a guide, it must at least acknowledge that we have some genuine, volitional control over our actions and choices — actions and choices that make a difference to where we end up in life...
"[Volition for the stoic however] is not a matter of possessing the ability to control or impact the events of our lives — it is about being free from the frustration and pain that comes from wanting events to occur other than they do... [Stoicism] 'does not offer us a means of achieving happiness, but only a means of resisting pain.' ...
"From a psychological perspective, this approach to values is fundamentally an attempt to avoid pain, frustration and loss in a world in which everything you might want or love or care about is short-lived, easily lost and precariously kept. To the extent that you invest yourself in things over which you have no control, they hold, you will be perpetually unhappy.
"Now, it is true that intensely valuing life and the things you love involves the possibility of pain, loss and disappointment, sometimes acute. Stoicism’s advice is to steel yourself against that possibility by killing your capacity to value. This is not a recipe for inner peace; it is a recipe for destroying any possibility for happiness...
"To take seriously and to benefit from advice about what is up to us and what is not, we would need to reject any form of determinism (Stoic or modern) and embrace the fact that we have free will — and that requires thinking carefully about what precisely is within our power to change and what isn’t so that we can formulate our goals and orient our efforts rationally...
"Contrary to the Stoic worldview, we live in a universe in which the achievement of genuine happiness is possible, provided we understand what is required to achieve it and we put forth the thought and effort it requires. And thus life can be, and properly ought to be, an ambitious and unrelenting quest for personal happiness and joy because the pursuit and achievement of these values is what makes life meaningful and worth living."
~ Aaron Smith, from his article 'The False Promise of Stoicism'
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5 comments:
I agree with the conclusion here, but I wonder if Stoicism might have seemed much more adaptive living in a pre-industrial, pre-Liberty, pre-scientific, world.
My exposure to Stoicism is limited - but the exercises I participated in during Stoic Week[1] convinced me that if I lived in a world where I couldn't easily make meaningful improvements to the quality of my life, and that my life was likely to be short, brutal, and dominated by others, Stoicism might be a useful toolset to help me make things more tolerable.
[1] I highly recommend participating in Stoic Week at least once (see https://modernstoicism.com/stoic-week/). For those with an interest in practical philosophy (in other words, useful philosophy ;) ) it's an enlightening experience.
"...I wonder if Stoicism might have seemed much more adaptive living in a pre-industrial, pre-Liberty, pre-scientific, world."
I think there's a lot of truth to that. When human action seems to have little effect on human flourishing, stoicism would seem a rational response.
If we take our dividing line between the-things-we-can-change and the-things-we-cannot-change to be (as Ayn Rand defined it) the difference between the metaphysical and the man-made, then the latter has certainly increased out of sight since the Industrial Revolution.
Meaning, as a consequence, that the scope for Stoicism is more limited, just as the scope for a a more teleological ethics has increased.
I don't profess to have a thorough knowledge of all Stoic philosophers. Some, or even many perhaps promote determinism as their defining attribute. Even the better ones such as Marcus Aurelius perhaps encourage it a little. Not surprising I suppose given the era they came from, when those born a slave were forever a slave - similar to the point Duncan is making.
But I can say the Stoic writings I get most value from do not promote determinism - nor the suppression of positive emotions. They promote distinguishing what you can control from what you can't control, and what's important from what's not - gaining satisfaction and positive emotions from the things that are both controllable and important. Too many people these days live in a swamp of unnecessary negativity or try to bask in unearned (and therefore transitory) positivity - by putting their emotions at the mercy of things that are uncontrollable and/or unimportant. Many Objectivists too, in fact probably more so than average. I think at least some of the Stoic writing would help them in this regard.
"If we take our dividing line between the-things-we-can-change and the-things-we-cannot-change to be (as Ayn Rand defined it) the difference between the metaphysical and the man-made, then the latter has certainly increased out of sight since the Industrial Revolution."
True, she made that distinction - and I agree with the point you're making here.
But there's another aspect I want to discuss. The issue, and possible conflict arises when you try to apply that principle to human interaction. As the "manmade" is controllable, Objectivists tend to get overly upset when people don't behave the way they think they should. Most unlike her fictional heroes Roark and Galt I would add. Or they get overly excited when someone seems to live up to their high expectations on paper, but is later renounced because they find some (alleged) flaw. Someone goes from being the absolute best to the absolute worst. You surely know plenty of examples of that happening!
In one sense the manmade is controllable, and that certainly applies to our own actions in the physical world - but the actions of others are something we can't control, nor are they usually that important in relation to our own, which is both controllable and more important. We shouldn't invest too much emotional energy, either positive or negative in how others act. All we can control in this context is how we react, and not be thrown too far from our mission into something overly negative or overly positive. That's one of the perspectives that Stoics such as Aurelius give you.
@mark: Aye, I can agree with that.
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