“The Death of Seneca” (1773) by Jacques-Louis David

This article is a preview from the Winter 2017 edition of New Humanist.

My personal philosophical trajectory can be summarised as follows: (mildly) Catholic by birth; atheist at 15; humanist until 50; then secular Stoic. That is, like a number of people prone to questioning their beliefs, I began with whatever religion was inculcated in me by my family and society, rejected it as soon as I developed sufficient independent thought (in my case, aided by Bertrand Russell and his essay “Why I Am Not a Christian”), and then adopted a more thoughtful framework to make sense of things and to guide me in life.

Why, then, did I not stop at humanism? What’s this Stoic thing all about? Humanism is a great set of ideas which found its roots in Ancient Greek philosophy, and began to flourish during the Enlightenment. It is a philosophy of reason and rational ethics, it supports science, and it promotes social justice and politically progressive causes. And yet, there had always been something nagging me about the whole thing. Whenever I told people that I was a ­humanist (or “secular humanist”, as we usually say in the US) I found that I had more than a bit of trouble articulating what, exactly, that means – other than a collection of nice ideas that seemed to be a list of things I like, more than a coherent philosophy. Atheism, if anything, fares even worse. Yes, I am an atheist, in the same sense in which I am an a-unicornist – I don’t see any positive reasons to believe in a deity, or in unicorns. But that’s just a negative metaphysical or, more strictly, epistemic position. It doesn’t really commit me to anything positive. It isn’t, in other words, a philosophy at all.

The above notwithstanding, I had lived well with my partially elaborated beliefs for decades. And then ­something weird appeared on my Twitter feed, coming from a group of philosophers and social scientists at ­Exeter University: “Help us celebrate Stoic Week”. Stoic Week? What the hell was that? And why would anyone ­celebrate Stoicism in the 21st century? I was curious. I signed up, and downloaded the handbook to guide me through a week of getting to know and practise the ancient ­Graeco-Roman philosophy. I was immediately hooked, and I’ve been a practising Stoic ever since. Moreover, I think Stoicism may provide a suitable alternative, or ­addition, to humanism.

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Let me then introduce you to three fundamental ideas of Stoicism – one theoretical, the other two practical – to explain why I’ve become what I call a secular Stoic. To begin with, the Stoics – a school of philosophers who flourished in the Greek and Roman worlds for several hundred years from the third century BCE – thought that, in order to figure out how to live our lives (what they called ethics), we need to study two other topics: physics and logic. “Physics” meant an understanding of the world, as best as human beings can grasp it, which is done by way of all the natural sciences as well as by metaphysics.

The reason that physics is considered so important is that attempting to live while adopting grossly incorrect notions about how the world works is a recipe for disaster. “Logic” meant not only formal reasoning, but also what we would today call cognitive science: if we don’t know how to use our mind correctly, including an awareness of its pitfalls, then we are not going to be in a position to live a good life.

The ancient Stoics explained the idea by way of a metaphor introduced by Chrysippus of Soli, the second head of the Stoa, as the Stoic school was known. It was named after the stoa poikile, the painted porch in Athens, a public place where Stoics would gather to discuss philosophy with whoever was interested. According to the metaphor, a life worth living is like a fenced garden: the fence itself is logic, as it guards the inside from weeds and other noxious things; the nurturing soil is the physics, since it informs us on how to navigate the world to the best of our ­abilities; and the fruits are the ethics, resulting in a eudaimonic (happy or flourishing) life, the sort of life that one looks back to on her death bed and thinks, “Yup, that was pretty well done.”

This means that Stoic theory embraces the humanist emphasis on an ethical life, but also directly justifies our interests in both metaphysics and natural sciences (“physics”) as well as philosophy and social science (“logic”). They all come together in a satisfyingly coherent package.

The first practical notion I’m going to discuss is that of the three disciplines and their related four virtues. Epictetus, a slave who became one of the most influential teachers of antiquity, thought that there are three areas of ­application of Stoic philosophy – what are now known as the three disciplines: desire, action and assent.

Desire has to do with figuring out what is in our interest to want and to avoid. It is connected to the topic (topos in Greek) of physics, since, in order to know what is and is not good for us, we need to have a grasp of how the world works. The discipline of desire involves the practice of two of the four cardinal Stoic virtues (which are actually found in plenty of other philosophies and religions, including Christianity): courage (to accept reality as it is and do the right thing anyway) and temperance (i.e. controlling our urges in order to respond appropriately to whatever comes our way).

Action pertains to how to properly behave within the polity of humanity, by practising the third virtue, justice, which means treating other people with fairness and kindness. It also means to consider all of humanity as a family – the idea that today we know as cosmopolitanism, a Greek term amply used by the Stoics (and their close philosophical relatives, the Cynics). The discipline of action is related to the topos of ethics, because for the Stoics living a good life as a human being meant to apply reason (the highest attribute of humanity) to social living (since we are, fundamentally and inherently, social animals).

As Epictetus said: “Do as Socrates did, never replying to the question of where he was from with, ‘I am Athenian,’ or ‘I am from Corinth,’ but always, ‘I am a citizen of the world’” (Discourses I, 9.1).

Lastly, the discipline of assent means that we should constantly ask ourselves whether the first impression we get about everything that happens to us is correct – in which case we can “give it assent” – or incorrect, in which case we “deny it assent”. For instance, let’s say that a cup I’m particularly fond of slips out of my hands, falls to the ground, and breaks. My first impression is that this is a bad thing, and that I should be upset about it. But Epictetus tells us to deploy the fourth cardinal virtue, that of practical wisdom (the ability of properly assessing situations), and agree that it was just a cup, something replaceable, something that is ultimately not important. Proper assent is made possible by the topos of logic, as it has to do with the correct use of our rational faculties.

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Before introducing the third fundamental Stoic idea, let me point out that Stoic practice actually works. It provided the philosophical bases for a number of evidence-based modern psychotherapies, including Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, Albert Ellis’s rational emotive behaviour therapy, and the family of approaches known as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). While a philosophy of life is broader than a therapy, and while, of course, CBT has been greatly expanded beyond its Stoic roots, it is satisfying to a scientist such as myself to know that some of the ancient ­Stoics’ insights into human psychology are still valid today.

The final Stoic idea I wish to introduce is known as the dichotomy of control, and it can change your life, for the better. Here is how Epictetus puts it in his Enchiridion (a sort of Stoic manual): “Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing.”

If this sounds familiar it is because it is the same sentiment behind the modern Serenity Prayer adopted by a number of 12-step organisations. You can also find it in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (Vonnegut was ­honorary president of the American Humanist Association) as well as in 11th-century Jewish philosophy and ­eighth-­century Buddhism.

Once you begin to internalise the dichotomy of ­control, you see the world in an entirely different manner. You ­focus your mental and emotional energy on wherever the locus of your action actually is, and begin to develop an attitude of equanimity towards everything else. This has countless applications, from everyday life to extreme situations. Let me give you just two examples.

The first one is personal, and it deals with a small incident in my life. Last year I was in Rome on a sabbatical ­semester (as it happens, writing a book on applied ­Stoicism), and one evening I got on a crowded metro ­carriage on my way to watch a film and have dinner with my brother and his wife. I felt an unusually strong pressure from a guy right in front of me, as if he didn’t want me to get on the train even though there was clearly space for me to squeeze in. I realised what was happening just a second too late: while he distracted me, his associate swiftly picked my pocket and lifted my wallet. The two of them jumped out of the train just as the doors were closing, in a display of perfect timing and coordination. Kudos to their evidently practised dexterity.

Normally this would have been an upsetting episode that would have affected my mood (and that of my brother and his wife) for the rest of the evening. I had been physically violated, felt the humiliation of being taken advantage of, lost some cash, and had to deal with the pain of blocking and replacing my credit cards and driver’s licence.

However, I kept repeating Epictetus’s words to myself, immediately calmed down, took the appropriate action (calling the credit card companies and the DMV, even from Italy), and by the time I joined my relatives a few minutes later, my mind was at ease and we had a jolly good time.

The point is: undoing what the thieves had done was not in my power. But distancing myself from the accident, giving the proper assent to what had happened, and taking action to minimise the damage definitely was within my power. That was a small but rather common example of practical philosophy in action.

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The second episode, thankfully, did not involve me. It happened on 9 September 1965 to James Stockdale, who was flying one of the early US missions in Vietnam. (He later became a vice admiral, and eventually ran as Ross Perot’s vice-presidential candidate in 1992.)

Stockdale had studied philosophy at Stanford, and had taken to heart the works of Epictetus. That day he was shot down, he ejected from his plane and had a few moments in the air to contemplate what would happen to him once he touched ground in the middle of enemy territory. As he put it: “After ejection I had about 30 seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed on the main street of that little village right ahead. And so help me, I whispered to myself: ‘Five years down there at the least. I’m leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.’”

It turned out that Stockdale spent seven-and-a-half years in the sarcastically named “Hanoi Hilton,” a Vietnamese prison where he was tortured and often put in isolation.

He survived the ordeal, and – as the highest-ranking American officer at the prison – was even able to organise and coordinate his fellow inmates’ resistance, to ­hamper Vietnamese propaganda. (Just to make clear that this has nothing to do with justifying the American war there, Stockdale had himself been present a few days earlier at the famous Tonkin Gulf incident that gave President Johnson the excuse to begin official hostilities, in retaliation against Vietnamese attacks. Hearing the news, Stockdale ­commented, “Retaliation for what?” He was ordered to keep silent.)

Stockdale credits Epictetus and Stoicism for his making it out of the Hanoi Hilton, precisely because he ­immediately came to apply the dichotomy of control, ­under ­circumstances much more extreme than any of us will likely have to ever face.

Of course, Stoicism is a 2,300-year-old philosophy, and back then there was a lot that people didn’t know about the world that we do know today. Which is why Stoicism is being updated for the 21st century (check a number of entries at my blog, howtobeastoic.org, among other sources). But that’s the beauty of a philosophy of life, as distinct from a religion. Just as in humanism, there are no sacred texts in Stoicism. I don’t accept a given notion just because Seneca, Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius said it. Indeed, the Stoics themselves actively encouraged open inquiry and changing one’s mind whenever the situation demands it. Here, for instance, is Marcus Aurelius, the emperor-philosopher:

We should always have these two rules in readiness: one, to do only whatever the reason of the ruling and legislating faculty [i.e. our rationality] may suggest for our use; the other, to change your opinion, if anyone sets you right and dissuades you from any opinion. (Meditations IV.12)

Stoicism is, in a sense, the Western tradition’s equivalent of Buddhism. And just as there is a vibrant secular Buddhism movement, there should be a secular Stoicism capable of appealing to people who want to live an ethical life informed by science and reason, who appreciate that human wisdom is just as cumulative as human knowledge, and who want their philosophy to be at the same time ­coherent and flexible enough to adjust to new times and circumstances. Great minds and great human beings – from Descartes to Spinoza, from George Washington to Nelson Mandela – have found Stoicism to be useful. Perhaps you will too.