A Guide to the Good Life : The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy (23 page)

Why do people behave this way? Why do they mock someone for adopting a philosophy of life? In part because by adopting one, whether it be Stoicism or some rival philosophy, a person is demonstrating that he has different values than they do. They might therefore infer that he thinks their values are somehow mistaken, which is something people don’t want to hear. Furthermore, by adopting a philosophy of life, he is, in effect, challenging them to do something they are probably reluctant to do: reflect on their life and how they are living it. If these people can get the convert to abandon his philosophy of life, the implied challenge will vanish, and so they set about mocking him in an attempt to make him rejoin the unreflecting masses.

W
HAT WILL BE
our reward for practicing Stoicism? According to the Stoics, we can hope to become more virtuous, in the ancient sense of the word. We will also, they say, experience fewer negative emotions, such as anger, grief, disappointment, and anxiety, and because of this we will enjoy a degree of tranquility that previously would have been unattainable. Along with avoiding negative emotions, we will increase our chances of experiencing one particularly significant positive emotion: delight in the world around us.

For most people, experiencing delight requires a change in circumstances; they might, for example, have to acquire a new consumer gadget. Stoics, in contrast, can experience delight without any such change; because they practice negative visualization, they will deeply appreciate the things they already have. Furthermore, for most people, the delight they experience will be somewhat clouded by the fear that they will lose
the source of their delight. Stoics, however, have a three-part strategy for minimizing this fear or avoiding it altogether.

To begin with, they will do their best to enjoy things that can’t be taken from them, most notably their character. Along these lines, consider Marcus’s comment that if we fall victim to a catastrophe, we can still take delight in the fact that it has not, because of the character we possess, made us bitter.
⁴

Furthermore, as they are enjoying things that
can
be taken from them—the Stoics, as we have seen, are not averse to doing this—they will simultaneously be preparing for the loss of those things. In particular, as part of our practice of negative visualization, say the Stoics, we need to keep in mind that it is a lucky accident that we are enjoying whatever it is we are enjoying, that our enjoyment of it might end abruptly, and that we might never be able to enjoy it again. We need, in other words, to learn how to enjoy things without feeling entitled to them and without clinging to them.

Finally, the Stoics are careful to avoid becoming connoisseurs in the worst sense of the word—becoming, that is, individuals who are incapable of taking delight in anything but “the best.” As a result, they will be capable of enjoying a wide range of easily obtainable things. They will keep firmly in mind Seneca’s comment that although “to have whatsoever he wishes is in no man’s power,” it is in every man’s power “not to wish for what he has not, but cheerfully to employ what comes to him.”
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Thus, if life should snatch one source of delight from them, Stoics will quickly find another to take its place: Stoic enjoyment, unlike that of a connoisseur, is eminently transferable. Along these lines, remember that
when Seneca and Musonius were banished to islands, rather than succumbing to depression, they set about studying their new environment.

Because they have learned to enjoy things that are easily obtainable or that can’t be taken from them, Stoics will find much in life to enjoy. They might, as a result, discover that they enjoy being the person they are, living the life they are living, in the universe they happen to inhabit. This, I should add, is no small accomplishment.

Stoics might also find that besides enjoying things in life, they enjoy the mere fact of being alive; they experience, in other words, joy itself. The Stoic sage will apparently be able to experience this joy all the time.
⁶
Those of us whose practice of Stoicism is less than perfect will not; instead, the joy we experience can best be described as intermittent. It will nevertheless be significantly greater than the joy we had previously known—again, no small accomplishment.

W
HEN SHOULD WE
begin our practice of Stoicism? Epictetus makes the case for starting immediately. We are no longer children, he says, and yet we procrastinate. Keep this up and we will one day realize that we have grown old without having acquired a philosophy of life—and that, as a result, we have wasted our life. Practicing Stoicism, he adds, is like training for the Olympics but with one important difference: Whereas the Olympic contests for which we might train will be held at some future date, the contest that is our life has already begun. Consequently, we do not have the luxury of postponing our training; we must start it this very day.
⁷

M
ARCUS
A
URELIUS WAS SIMULTANEOUSLY
a Stoic philosopher and, as Roman emperor, the most powerful man in the Western world. This confluence of philosophy and politics could have been quite beneficial to Stoicism, but as we have seen, he did not try to convert his fellow Romans to the philosophy. As a result, Marcus became, in the words of the nineteenth-century historian W. E. H. Lecky, “the last and most perfect representative of Roman Stoicism.”
¹
After his death, Stoicism fell into a slump from which it has yet to recover.

As is the case with any complex social phenomenon, several factors lay behind this decline. For example, Lecky (whose views, I have been told, have fallen out of favor) argued that the increasing corruption and depravity of Roman society made Stoicism—which, as we have seen, calls for considerable self-control—unattractive to many Romans.
²
The classicist M. L. Clarke offers a different explanation: Stoicism, he suggests, declined in part because of a lack of charismatic teachers of Stoicism after the death of Epictetus.
³
Many people are capable of describing the principles of a philosophy in a
coherent fashion, but one of the things that made Stoicism a vital force was that teachers such as Musonius and Epictetus, besides being able to explain Stoicism, were in a sense embodiments of the doctrine. They were living proof that Stoicism, if practiced, would yield the benefits the Stoics promised. When Stoicism was taught by mere mortals, potential pupils were much less likely to be swept away by it.

Stoicism was also undermined by the rise of Christianity, in part because the claims made by Christianity were similar to those made by Stoicism. The Stoics claimed, for example, that the gods created man, care about man’s well-being, and gave him a divine element (the ability to reason); the Christians claimed that God created man, cares about him in a very personal way, and gave him a divine element (a soul). Stoicism and Christianity both enjoined people to overcome unwholesome desires and to pursue virtue. And Marcus’s advice that we “love mankind” was certainly echoed in Christianity.
⁴

Because of these similarities, Stoics and Christians found themselves competing for the same potential adherents. In this competition, however, Christianity had one big advantage over Stoicism: It promised not just life after death but an afterlife in which one would be infinitely satisfied for an eternity. The Stoics, on the other hand, thought it possible that there was life after death but were not certain of it, and if there was indeed life after death, the Stoics were uncertain what it would be like.

S
INCE THE DEATH
of Marcus, Stoicism has led an underground existence, only occasionally emerging into the light of day. In
the seventeenth century, for example, René Descartes revealed his Stoic leanings in his
Discourse on Method
. At one point he describes the maxims that, if followed, would enable him to live as happily as was possible. The third of these maxims could have been—indeed, probably was—lifted straight out of Epictetus: “Always to seek to conquer myself rather than fortune, to change my desires rather than the established order, and generally to believe that nothing except our thoughts is wholly under our control, so that after we have done our best in external matters, what remains to be done is absolutely impossible, at least as far as we are concerned.”
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(Notice, by the way, the internalization of goals implied in Descartes’ comment about doing our best.)

In the nineteenth century, the influence of Stoicism could be found in the writings of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer; his essays “Wisdom of Life” and “Counsels and Maxims,” although not explicitly Stoical, have a distinctly Stoical tone. At this same time, across the Atlantic, the influence of Stoicism could be found in the writings of the New England Transcendentalists. Henry David Thoreau, for example, doesn’t directly mention Stoicism or any of the great Stoics in
Walden
, his masterpiece, but to those who know what to look for, the Stoic influence is present. In his
Journal
, Thoreau is more forthcoming. He writes, for example, that “Zeno the Stoic stood in precisely the same relation to the world that I do now.”
⁶

Like the Stoics, Thoreau was interested in developing a philosophy of life. According to the Thoreau scholar Robert D. Richardson, “His was always the practical question, how best
can I live my daily life?,” and his life itself can best be understood, says Richardson, as “one long uninterrupted attempt to work out the practical concrete meaning of the stoic idea that the laws which rule nature rule men as well.”
⁷
Thoreau went to Walden Pond to conduct his famous two-year experiment in simple living in large part so that he could refine his philosophy of life and thereby avoid misliving: A primary motive in going to Walden, he tells us, was his fear that he would, “when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
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Some of his friends and neighbors, who might or might not have been aware of his attraction to Stoicism, accused Thoreau of being stoical—of being, that is, grim and unfeeling. The accusation, Richardson argues, is unfounded. Although it may not have been obvious to those around him, Thoreau appears to have experienced the joy the Stoics sought. Thus, we find Thoreau declaring that “surely joy is the condition of life.”
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And Thoreau’s
Journal
, says Richardson, “is filled with comments reflecting his gusto, his appetite for experience, the keenness of his senses, the sheer joy of being alive.”
¹⁰

During most of the twentieth century, Stoicism was a neglected doctrine. Indeed, according to the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, twentieth-century philosophers, in both Europe and North America, made less use of Stoicism and the other Hellenistic philosophies—namely, Epicureanism and Skepticism—than “almost any other philosophical culture in the West since the fourth century B.C.E.”
¹¹
By the turn of the millennium, Stoicism was, for most people, a nonstarter as a philosophy of life. For one thing, they saw no need to live in accordance with a philosophy. And those enlightened individuals
who did seek a philosophy of life rarely regarded Stoicism as a viable candidate. They were convinced that they knew what Stoicism was: a doctrine whose adherents are humorless, grim, and unfeeling. Who would voluntarily join such a crowd?

If this book has done its job, readers will appreciate how woefully mistaken this characterization of Stoicism is. The Stoics were not stoical! Nor did they live joyless lives! Indeed, they were probably more likely to experience joy than most non-Stoics.

This realization, though, is rarely sufficient to overcome people’s aversion toward Stoicism. Even after they acknowledge that the Stoics were fully functional individuals, capable of joy and worthy of our admiration, they retain a degree of hostility toward the doctrine. Let us now explore some of the reasons for the modern aversion to Stoicism, beginning with the argument that if modern psychology is right, Stoicism is a misguided philosophy of life.

T
HE
S
TOICS HAD
many important psychological insights. They realized, for example, that what makes insults painful is our interpretation of the insults rather than the insults themselves. They also realized that by engaging in negative visualization we can convince ourselves to be happy with what we already have and thereby counteract our tendency toward insatiability.

Anti-Stoics might concede that these are important insights but go on to point out that a lot has happened in the two millennia since the Roman Stoics pondered the human psyche. In particular, the twentieth century witnessed the transformation of psychology into a proper scientific discipline.
Anti-Stoics might add that among the most significant psychological discoveries made in the past hundred years was the realization of the danger we pose to ourselves if we try to conquer our emotions, the way the Stoics did. Indeed, the consensus view among psychological therapists is that we should stay in touch with our emotions: Rather than trying to deny their existence, we should contemplate them, and rather than trying to bottle them up, we should vent them. And if we find ourselves disturbed by negative emotions, we should not attempt to deal with them on our own but should instead share them with a psychological counselor who has made it her business to understand how the human mind works.

By way of illustration, consider grief. Modern psychology has shown (anti-Stoics will explain) that grief is a perfectly natural response to a personal tragedy. A grief-stricken person should vent his grief, not suppress it. If he feels like crying, he should cry. He should share his feelings with friends and relatives and should probably even seek the assistance of a professional grief counselor who will periodically meet with him, talk to him about his grief, and help him work through it. If he instead follows the advice of the Stoics and tries to suppress his grief, he may spare himself anguish in the short term, but he sets himself up for a debilitating episode of “delayed grief” months or even years later.