STOIC IDEAS FOR TODAY

Ronald J. Glossop

I. Introduction.
A. Let me introduce our topic for today by quoting from British
classics scholar Gilbert Murray, who in his 1940 book Stoic,
Christian, and Humanist, wrote:
"Stoicism may be called either a philosophy or a religion. It was a
religion in its exalted passion; it was a philosophy inasmuch as it
made no pretence to magical powers or supernatural knowledge. I do
not suggest that it is a perfect system, with no errors of fact and
no inconsistencies of theory. It is certainly not that; and I do not
know of any system that is. But I believe that it represents a way
of looking at the world and the practical problems of life which
still possess a permanent interest for the human race, and a
permanent power of inspiration."
B. We should note that Stoicism flourished in the Roman Empire
from about the time of Jesus until the third century, a situation and
time which has some parallels with our contemporary situation.
1. At that time the Romans had attained hegemony over the
Mediterranean world similar to the way that in our own day the United
States has attained hegemony over the whole world.
2. Another parallel is the cultural upheaval taking place,
especially in regard to religion. For the Romans it was the
breakdown of the classical polytheism of the Greeks and Romans,
fostered by new contacts with other cultures and by the arguments of
philosophers against those traditional religions. For us it is the
intellectual difficulties facing all the agrarian supernatural
religions as the result of the scientific discoveries of the past 500
years. In addition we now face all the social changes resulting from
the industrial revolution, including the spread of mass education and
mass communication.
3. A third parallel is the breakdown of the traditional
political borders. For the Greeks and Romans, it was the decreasing
influence of most small city-state governments while for us it is the
decreasing influence of many small national governments. As part of
the hegemonic power, we, like the Romans, are not so aware of this
change as outsiders are.
C. Stoicism began earlier in Greece at a time when its
city-states had just been conquered by Philip of Macedon. Stoicism
was founded by Zeno, a Phoenician born about 336 BCE in the city of
Citium on the island of Cyprus. (This Zeno is to be distinguished
from the other more famous Zeno of Elea known for his famous
paradoxes related to the concept of infinity). Zeno, the Stoic,
began teaching his views in Athens in 320 BCE at the "painted porch,"
which gave Stoicism its name. "Painted Porch" in Greek is "Stoa
Poikile."
D. The Stoic ideas evolved and spread, first into to Asia Minor
(Turkey today) and the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean, then
westward to Rome itself.
E. One of the important teachers of Stoicism for the Roman Stoics
was Epictetus (50-130), a slave freed when his master died. He
taught in Rome until 89, when the despotic emperor Domitian drove all
philosophers out of the capital city.
F. The most well-known of all the Stoic philosophers was
undoubtedly the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180) while Marcus
Tullius Cicero (106-143) was a well-known Roman Stoic statesman,
orator, and writer.
G. Some Stoic ideas will be familiar to Christians because Paul,
often regarded as the person who actually founded Christianity as a
religion separate from Judaism, incorporated them into his writings,
which then became part of the Bible. As a result we may think of an
expression like "the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man" or
the notion of God as a being "in whom we live and move and have our
being" as Christian ideas when in fact they are derived from Stoic
philosophy.

II. Stoicism is an intriguing philosophical system because it is
based on a materialistic view of reality while at the same time
having the ethical tone of a religious outlook. In the heyday of the
Roman Empire when the old polytheistic religions of Greece and Rome
were being torn apart by philosophical criticism, Stoicism contested
with not only many new religions but also with other popular
philosophies such as Epicureanism to provide an answer to the twin
issues of how to understand reality and how to live one's life.

III. A core theme for Stoicism with many implications is the theme of
the relative smallness and general insignificance of individual human
beings in the big scheme of things. One of the central themes of
Stoicism, both metaphysically and ethically, is anti-egoism. We
humans have huge egos, both individually and collectively, so it is
important from time to time to do some reality checks.
A. Modern astronomy allows us to go even further in this
direction of the relative insignificance of individual humans than
the Stoics were able to do. It has been about 15 billion years since
the big bang gave rise to our universe, and there may even have been
other universes before that. About 10 billion years ago the sun was
formed, and the Earth about 4.6 billion years ago. There are
billions of stars out there, some undoubtedly with planets, and the
vastness of space between them is virtually unimaginable. In
contrast, each individual human being generally lives less than a
hundred years. There are now over 6 billion humans on the planet, so
how important is any one of us? Will even your own great-grand
children think much about you after you have been gone for ten years?
(How recently have you thought about your own great-grandparents?)
How long is even the most famous person remembered? The Stoics want
us to be ever aware of the spatial and temporal greatness of nature
compared to the smallness and transitoriness of we individual human
beings.
B. It is in the area of ethics, of course, that this point takes
on particular significance. Are you going to live your life pursuing
your own petty interests, thinking only about your own pleasures and
pains? In fact, it was that egoistic pursuit of pleasure that the
Stoics most roundly condemned. As the great Stoic teacher Epictetus
put it, "Chastise your passions, that they may not chastise you. . .
. . It belongs to a wise man to resist pleasure; and to a fool to be
enslaved by it." As Bill Clinton and Jesse Jackson among others
demonstrate, people can do the most stupid things for some momentary
gratification. That is the danger of focusing just on our own
pleasure of the moment.
C. But the Stoic ethic was not merely negative; it did not just
protest against egoism and momentary gratifications. There was also
a positive component. The positive element was that one should see
oneself as a member of the community of all rational beings, a
community whose welfare is much more important than what happens to
any individual. As already noted, the Christian idea of the
Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man was taken directly from
the Stoics, but Christianity neglected the Stoic emphasis on the fact
that the foundation of this community was Reason, the capability of
seeing things from a universal and disinterested point of view. Let
me quote Epictetus again:
"What is a human being? A part of a commonwealth; first and chiefly
of that which includes both gods and men; and next, of that to which
you immediately belong, which is a miniature of the universal city. .
. . You are a citizen of the universe, and a part of it; not a
subordinate, but a principal part. You are capable of comprehending
the Divine economy; and of considering the connections of things.
What then does the character of a citizen imply? To hold no private
interest; to deliberate of nothing as a separate individual, but
rather like the hand or the foot, which if they had reason, and
comprehended the constitution of nature, would never pursue, or
desire, but with a reference to the whole. Hence the philosophers
rightly say, that, if it were possible for a wise and good man to
foresee what was to happen, he would [even] co-operate in bringing on
himself sickness, and death, and mutilation, being sensible that
these things are appointed in the order of the universe; and that the
whole is superior to a part, and the city to the citizen."
In other words, put your ego in its place, and subordinate your
interests to what is good for humanity and the universe in the long
run.
D. The Stoics thus viewed each human being as having a "spark"
of God, as having the capacity to use impartial reason, of being able
to see things from a God's-eye point of view. All humans have an
obligation to take into account the point of view of other persons.
There is a natural law which applies even when there is no
government to enforce it, a law based on the Golden Rule, that people
should not do to others what they don't want done to themselves.
Given this outlook, it should come as no surprise that the Stoics
were the first philosophers to condemn all kinds of slavery and to
talk about the oneness of the whole human community regardless of
national and ethnic differences.
E. Stoics also carried this anti-egoism consistently even into
their thinking about miracles and death and the possibility of an
after-life. While some Christians urged their followers to pray for
whatever they wanted, other Christians took the more Stoic view that
the proper prayer for all should be, "Not my will but thine be done."
In fact, for the Stoics it would be absolutely immoral to pray that
the laws of the universe be changed for your personal desires. How
outrageous to think that God should change the laws by which the
whole universe operates in order to grant you some personal desire!
And how outrageous it would be to think that human beings go on
existing in some supernatural way after death when that is not how
nature works in the case of other living things! Life and
growth--and also disease and death--are part of the natural order of
things, and there is no reason to suppose that human beings should
not be subject to the same laws as the rest of creation.
F. Stoics wanted to remind people of how generally powerless they
are in the total scheme of things. Does anyone control when or where
or in what form he or she will be born? Who chooses what race they
will be or what gender they will be or how rich or poor their parents
will be. The laws of nature determine what happens, and we are
subject to them just as the rest of nature. No one can change the
past, and we probably can't do very much to change the future.
Acknowledging the degree to which fate or nature controls our lives
is the beginning of wisdom, and also of ethical sensitivity. Is
there anything more irrational than blaming or punishing other people
because they were born blind or deaf or with some other disability?
Is there anything more immoral than people lording it over others
because of how those others were unfortunate enough to receive less
than their share of brains or beauty or talent? And what about
people looking down on others simply because they were born in a poor
country or who lack various capabilities due to factors completely
outside their control? The Stoic calls us to remember how much of
our lives are outside of our own control.
G. Let me interrupt my presentation of Stoic ideas at this point to
offer a critique of a religion which incorporates in its central
doctrines a viewpoint exactly opposite to the Stoic viewpoint on how
impotent we are in the big scheme of things. Hinduism, with its
doctrines of reincarnation and karma, promotes the view that whether
people are born rich or poor, male or female, aristocrats or
untouchables, is not a matter of luck but rather a matter of how they
lived in their previous lives. Such a view means that there is no
reason to provide humanitarian assistance to those who are less
fortunate because their misfortune is not really a matter of luck but
a demonstration of what they deserve. The problem, of course, is
that no one remembers their previous lives or really knows whether
this theoretical business of reincarnation and karma is true or not.
It may be argued that these doctrines should be promoted whether they
are true or not because they will motivate people to do what is moral
and avoid doing anything that is immoral. One can see, however, that
such doctrines actually can serve another purpose, namely, to excuse
the more fortunate from doing anything at all to assist the less
fortunate since it is maintained that the less fortunate deserve to
be worse off and the more fortunate deserve to be better off.
Unfortunately, Hindus are not the only religious persons who believe
that God in some supernatural way causes good people to prosper and
those who are wicked to suffer and be poor.

IV. Given the Stoic doctrine of how little power we have in the big
scheme of things, one might ask whether we have any free will at all?
The Stoic answer is, Yes, you have free will in the sense that you
can control your reactions to what happens and in the sense that you
can try to do one thing or another--though whether your efforts
succeed is not within your control. Whether you are healthy or sick
is to a great extent out of your control, but the attitude you have
toward your sickness is within your control. And what are the
possible attitudes you might have. Essentially there are two, (1)
acceptance or (2) lamentation and complaining. How often we are wont
to think, Why did this happen to me? But note the egotism here.
Would you prefer that this misfortune would happen to someone else?
The Stoic view is, I have a duty to accept what nature dishes out.
There is no point in complaining. It is egoistic to do that. It is
immoral to wish that such misfortune should instead have happened to
someone else. Ultimately, it is irreverent to do that because all
that happens occurs in accord with laws of nature, which are but
another way of talking about God's will. Would you have the laws of
the whole universe changed so that you could avoid this or that
misfortune?
A. Again, the Stoics not only preached about what one should not
do but gave a positive image of what one should do. Let us turn
again to Epictetus:
"It is not possible that things should be otherwise than they now
are. . . . Remember that you are an actor in a drama of such sort as
the author chooses. If short, then in a short one; if long, then in
a long one. If it be his pleasure that you should act a poor man,
see that you act it well; or a cripple, or a ruler, or a private
citizen. For this is your business, to act well the given part; but
to choose it, belongs to another."
B. A corollary to this viewpoint is that the only thing that is
really good or bad is one's will. Other things, such as our
intelligence and beauty and health and wealth and popularity, are
ultimately outside of our control. What is within our control is
whether we accept or complain about what fate and nature dish out to
us plus what sorts of things we aim to do, which is not always the
same as what we actually succeed in accomplishing. A good will is a
will which accepts the way the world is and which subordinates its
own selfish aims to the long-term welfare of the community of
rational beings. A bad will is a will which laments and bitches and
complains and is concerned only about what it can get for itself.
C. One can see in these doctrines of the Stoics the attitudes
that people have in mind when they advise others to "be
philosophical" about something. Accept what can't be changed and
focus on what can be changed, namely our own attitudes and our own
efforts. That is the extent of our free will according to the
Stoics. Unfortunately, we humans often worry ourselves greatly about
what others are or are not doing while totally overlooking what we
ourselves could try to do. As Jesus put it, we have this tendency to
worry about the speck in the other person's eye while not seeing the
log in our own.

V. Another part of the Stoic outlook is not to blame others for
accidents or for bad things that have happened to you. To quote
Epictetus again:
"It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for
his own misfortunes; of one entering upon instruction, to reproach
himself; and of one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others
nor himself. . . . . Demand not that events should happen as you
wish; but accept their happening as they do happen, and you will get
on well."

VI. We come now to another important point in the Stoic philosophy,
namely, the inappropriateness of vengeance. It is not only our own
lives that are largely outside of our control. The same situation
exists for others. If some of our possessions are destroyed by a
tornado or a hurricane, we readily see that this is the result of the
laws of nature acting as they do. We see that the loss was necessary
and could not have been otherwise. Why is it not possible to take
the same view when some of our possessions are stolen by someone
else? Was this also not ultimately the result of the laws of nature
acting as they do? Will vengefulness stop either kind of event from
happening in the future? Mahatma Gandhi has summed up the subject of
vengeance for us in this most memorable statement: "An eye for an eye
makes the whole world blind."

VII. Up to this point I have been emphasizing the practical or
ethical part of the Stoic view, namely, their view of how we should
live. I now must say something about the theoretical or metaphysical
part of their view.
A. Earlier I noted in passing that the Stoics are materialists.
They believe that only the material world is real. It is an
ever-changing world, but these changes are not random. These
constant changes all take place in accord with the unchanging laws of
nature. There are no miracles, no supernatural forces at work.
B. So how can this be considered a religious view? How can the
Stoics say that these laws of nature can also be viewed as "the will
of God"?
C. The Stoics are pantheists. That means that they believe that
everything, that the whole of the universe, is God. The physical
universe can be viewed as God's body while the forces moving the
universe can be viewed as God's soul. Or one might want to say that
God in the active sense is the soul which animates the physical
universe. That is why the laws of nature according to which the
universe changes can also be viewed as the "will of God." The
seventeenth-century Dutch Jewish philosopher Spinoza (1632-1677) gave
a modern statement of an essentially Stoic pantheistic point of view.
D. The Stoics thought of God not only as a powerful force but
also as a rational force and thus responsible for the order in the
world.
E. The assumption is made that order is good while disorder or
chaos is bad. God is viewed as ordering or governing the world for
good. Humans should be ready to subordinate their personal will to
God's will because God wills what is good for the whole world.
E. Interestingly, the Stoics were able to portray their view as
a more sophisticated way of understanding the earlier polytheism of
the Greeks and Romans. The Greek gods and goddesses could be viewed
as the poetic personification of natural forces. Poseidon or Neptune
is just a personification of the forces of nature related to the
oceans. Aphrodite or Venus is just a personification of the powerful
forces of nature manifested in the sex drive of animals. Zeus or
Jupiter is simply the personification of the unification of all the
forces of nature. Thus the old traditional religion need not be
totally abandoned but just understood in a more sophisticated way.
F. Even though Stoics use religious language talking freely
about the "will of God" and the presence of a divine providence that
directs the whole world, they are consistent in their materialism and
deny that there is any life-after-death or any kind of reward for
living virtuously. Virtue is its own reward. Humans are born, grow,
and die in accord with the laws of nature just as other living
organisms do.

VIII. Let me close by returning to Gilbert Murray's discussion of
the Stoic view:
A. He says, "Stoicism . . . fulfilled the two main demands that
man makes upon his religion: it gave him armor when the world was
predominantly evil, and it encouraged him forward when the world was
predominantly good. It afforded guidance both for the saint and the
public servant. . . . [I]n the Good Life there is both an element of
outward striving and an element of inward peace. There are things
which we must try to attain, yet it is not really the attainment that
matters; it is the seeking. And, consequently, in some sense the
real victory is with him who fought best, not with the man who
happened to win."
B. Murray's critique of Stoicism is that this philosophy starts
"out with every intention of facing the problem of the world by hard
thought and observation, resolutely excluding all appeal to tradition
and mere mythology, [but it] ends by making this tremendous
assumption, that there is a beneficent purpose in the world and that
the force which moves nature is akin to ourselves," that there is "A
Friend behind the phenomena," that there is some benevolent purpose
at the core of reality.
C. In the end, however, Murray notes that Stoic acceptance of
this widespread but nevertheless possibly false religious belief that
there is a "Friend behind the phenomena" may be the result of a
deep-seated nonrational biological instinct. "We cannot help looking
out on the world as gregarious animals do; we see it in terms of
humanity and of fellowship. Students of animals under domestication
have shown us how the habits of a gregarious creature, taken away
from its kind, are shaped in a thousand details by reference to the
lost pack which is no longer there--the pack which a dog tries to
smell his way back to all the time he is out walking, the pack he
barks to for help when danger arises. It is a strange and touching
thing, this eternal hunger of the gregarious animal for the herd of
friends who are not there. And it may be, it may very possibly be,
that, in the matter of this Friend behind phenomena, our own yearning
and our own almost ineradicable instinctive conviction, since they
are certainly not founded on either reason or observation, are in
origin the groping of a lonely-souled gregarious animal to find its
herd or its herd-leader in the great spaces between the stars. At
any rate, it is a belief very difficult to get rid of."