Episode 237 - Transcript

Hello everyone. I’m Stephen West. This is Philosophize This!

Patreon.com/philosophizethis. Philosophical writing on Substack at Philosophize This on there. Hope you love the show today.

So this podcast is kind of a part two of LAST episode we did talking about Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Today we’re talking about the rebuttal to all that by Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Schopenhauer.

Just to be clear the two of them never COLLABED on any of this stuff…this is taken from EACH of their work, individually, WOVEN together here today… because they represent such different arguments about WHY they thought the Stoics were wrong.

Which to put it in a single sentence, that I’ll spend the REST of this episode today explaining: Friedrich Nietzsche thought the Stoics… weren’t life-affirming ENOUGH in their view of the world and so ROBBED themselves of some of the most critical aspects of life…and Arthur Schopenhauer thought that the stoics were TOO life-affirming, of WORLDLY things at least…in a way that prevents a Stoic from ever really UNDERSTANDING the world at a deep level.

There’s obviously much MORE to it, but this Birds Eye view of the whole thing can be HELPFUL to have at the start sometimes I think, and we’ll understand it by the end of the episode.

Gonna start with some Nietzsche here today though. And maybe the best place to start is to say…that you know, the Stoics are pretty good candidates for being the “poster-children”...of one of the BIGGEST problems Nietzsche had with the ENTIRE history of Western philosophy.

See by the time Nietzsche’s doing his work in the late 1800’s…he thought there had been over 2000 years of DECLINE in western thinking… and along with it a decline in western civilization I guess.

He called it Dekadenz. Though it has nothing to do with DECADENCE as we might use that word today in english.

Dekadenz was the sign of a physiological and cultural DECLINE that has gone on in people over time. The world’s become a place where there are more and more people who over intellectualize about everything, more people who have weakened drives, a weak sense of vitality, far more weakness of the will going on, more people that spend their time morally judging OTHER people, rather than DOING things THEMSELVES, there’s many MORE examples of dekadenz than this.

But ALL of this ORIGINATED Nietzsche thought…in people like Socrates and Plato…who started this trend of people being practically OBSESSED with the idea that there MUST be some kind of rational, stable ORDER, to the way that things play out in the universe.

Now how could those two things be connected?

Well look don’t get him wrong: Nietzsche is by ALL MEANS a FAN of rationality as a tool we can use to SHAPE our thinking, he thinks obviously we NEED it…but he thinks that if you TREATED reason…as though it’s THE tool that can EXPLAIN all of reality for you…then you’re always gonna be missing out on all sorts of more DYNAMIC pieces of reality, that are just unfolding in every moment. Creativity, improvisation, instinct, passion…in other words: anything about reality at the level of BECOMING and EMERGENCE. It’s people IGNORING these important pieces of reality, in FAVOR of the RATIONAL, that’s a big contributor TO this cultural decline.

Turns out all these things are very IMPORTANT for our understanding of life and the universe.

And it’s right HERE at the metaphysical level that we can start to see the first glimmers of where Nietzsche is going to think the Stoics went wrong: it’s in these classic concepts of being vs becoming.

The question is: how do you look at the universe. Well the Stoics viewed it in terms of being. Nietzsche’s gonna view it in terms of becoming.

What‘s MEANT by this is that the Stoics…are ALWAYS trying to DIRECT their behavior towards SOMETHING static that they think EXISTS out there in a STABLE WAY…whether that’s apatheia, whether that’s being in alignment with NATURE or the DIVINE LOGOS, whether it’s just those four cardinal virtues of Stoicism in Justice, Courage, Wisdom and Temperance…point is: the Stoics have a way of LOOKING at their PLACE in the world…where they’re always aiming to BE something. Again, it’s BEING, not becoming. They believe its possible, for them to DO the WORK every day…and eventually BE in alignment with virtue.

Now if you’re Nietzsche: whenever someone starts TALKING like this… they are always imposing SOME kind of rational order onto the true indifference and flux of the universe…they’re trying to MAKE it into something more STABLE than it actually IS.

Nietzsche thinks this is naive…see HE’S more in the camp of thinking… where transformation of ANY type personal or otherwise, is always something that is iterative, it’s CONSTANTLY in a state of unfolding. It’s NOT something you can ARRIVE at…and it’s not really something you can nail down with a set of rational protocols even if you WANTED to.

In other words: Nietzsche doesn’t think the Stoics… take the INDIFFERENCE and EMERGENCE of the universe seriously ENOUGH.

He has this great section in Beyond Good and Evil when he’s talking about the stoic idea…that when external events happen to us…well, we can’t control them right, BECAUSE they’re a part of nature. And BECAUSE they’re a part of nature… they belong in a class of things that the stoics call “indifferents”.

Meaning when it comes to nature unfolding the way that it does…we can’t say whether these things… are good or BAD…the ONLY thing we can say is good or bad…are the REACTIONS that a person HAS to what happens.

A good STOIC then… learns to ACCEPT these indifferents for what they are…and HOPEFULLY even one day they can learn to LOVE the events of nature…in the spirit of the Stoic concept of Amor Fati.

But Nietzsche asks: how is it possible…for someone to ALIGN their BEHAVIOR with something indifferent? I mean what are we DOING here? Either… this is a benevolent rational order that we need to be modeling our behavior after… or it’s indifferent.

And when it comes down to it Nietzsche’s not trying to pick on the Stoics SPECIFICALLY…it’s not like the Stoics are ESPECIALLY WRONG here to him…to Nietzsche they’re just doing what human beings do.

They are exercising their will to power. They are CREATING a set of values and an ethics that goes along with them. And then they are PROJECTING those values ONTO the UNIVERSE… and MISTAKING them as being written IN to the universe.

And that’s not just Stoicism…how bout Christianity, Vedism, Kantian ethics, practically EVERYONE is DOING this same THING for Nietzsche. It’s just the STOICS do it with a rational divine logos at the bottom.

The Stoics’ll sit around…giving themselves a round of applause when their values seem to BE there, you know when they SEE rationality in an ecosystem or with how the PLANETS orbit or something…but then when the hurricane rolls through town and decimates everything in it’s path, well that belongs to the “indifferent” category. You know, I may PREFER… for the hurricane to not carry grandma away along with the spare bedroom of the house…but look this is not something I can really say is good or bad.

And yet you should structure your life around emulating it, Nietzsche might ask.

For Nietzsche: everything in Stoicism begins from ASSUMING there is a rational order to things that we have absolutely no reason to be assuming. And this assumption has REAL IMPACTS on the experience of a Stoic, and the place they always need to be orienting the things in their life from. Maybe the most OBVIOUS place you can see this is in the very different ways that the Stoics and Nietzsche talk about the concept of Amor Fati.

Remember the STOICS say… you should embrace everything that comes your way, LOVE YOUR FATE they say…because ALL this that’s going on is part of the rational order of the universe whether you realize why it’s happening or not. So you can see they START… by PROJECTING a METAPHYSICS onto things where everything is rational… and then ONLY from THERE they say to LOVE it… BECAUSE it’s rational.

But the Amor Fati of Nietzsche, is far more radical than that. HE wants to love his fate…whether it’s rational or NOT.

Whether it’s order, disorder, chaos, I mean to Nietzsche: to say that nature is INDIFFERENT, and then to REALLY take that statement SERIOUSLY… that MEANS you’d BE someone who would affirm reality… whether there WAS some kind of ultimate rational plan to it or not.

And the challenge Nietzsche puts out there for people is for you to live SO PASSIONATELY…so affirming of ANYTHING necessary the universe throws your way…that you don’t NEED any sort of transcendent PURPOSE that makes things feel more palatable to you. You wouldn’t have a need to try to CONTROL and GOVERN down what a human life is…just to MAKE it into something more manageable. And this critique obviously extends BEYOND just Stoicism, to ANY approach that does this like the more religious ones we just mentioned.

In fact Nietzsche says at one point the people that are often attracted to Stoicism… are people that SEE life as a state of PERIL, something they need to ESCAPE. And to HIM they’re willing to USE this rationality of theirs, to practice what he calls a kind of self-tyranny, JUST so they can avoid a world where they have to face the irrational side of existence head on.

Because think of the move Stoics often find themselves doing in the name of being a more moral person.

They encounter something in the world that makes them feel intense anger, or desire, or fear or ANY of these emotions that are a PART of an everyday human experience. And THEIR job is to GOVERN these emotions DOWN, correct the mistaken JUDGMENT that’s at the heart of them…so they can get back to the rational, calm, CENTERED experience that Stoics say is an acceptable experience to have.

Should ANYTHING in their life…like say, a romantic relationship, not operate from a place of cultivating VIRTUE…then to REMAIN in that relationship for a Stoic…is something immoral, that needs to be corrected.

For example, say you’re an imperfect person like the rest of humanity. Say you’re actually a little damaged because of THINGS in your past, and say you meet someone else who’s ALSO, a little damaged by things in theirs.

And say the two of you have a relationship for a while…that GETS a little MESSY. It’s CHAOTIC at moments, you try to stay calm every day, but lets say in practice, you pretty often get dragged into an argument because of all the dynamics in play, you say stuff you wish you didn’t say, partner does the same thing, you guys DO this together, eventually make up and do it all over again the very next week.

But let’s ALSO say that after YEARS of this you break up…you look back on all that happened…and you realize that despite everything you guys were there for each other in ways that you ABSOLUTELY NEEDED during that time in your life.

You look back on it and say jeez well all of that certainly wasn’t ideal back then. Wouldn’t exactly describe it as RATIONAL. But wow did I LEARN a lot from it, and boy am I glad in some sense that I HAD this person when I did.

For Nietzsche: this messy relationship, is a PART of self transformation. For HIM this is the non-ideal, REAL way that MOST human life plays out MOST of the time. And by the way to him ALL of this would be potential FUEL… for the kind of self-overcoming and GROWTH that Nietzsche thinks is crucial.

But for an aspiring Stoic sage on the other hand…this WHOLE RELATIONSHIP from the START… was rooted in a lack of virtue. It wasn’t rationally ordered enough. It put you in a place where it made it MUCH more difficult for you to cultivate your own morality. You better HOPE you didn’t get overly vulnerable when you were in that relationship because there’s ANOTHER black mark on the record that you’re gonna have to answer for.

Point is: instead of being able to see this as a real piece of your life that you can transmute into something greater…under Nietzsche’s reading: if this didn’t help you become a better Stoic, the Stoic has to see MOST of this time you spent…as essentially a waste of your life. Every argument was a mistaken judgment. Every bit of jealousy you had…was just ignorance on your part. You should’ve essentially AVOIDED this entire section of your life…and the fact you didn’t… is already a moral failure.

But again to Nietzsche: this is your LIFE we’re talking about. Should we really be writing off entire SECTIONS of our life? And for what reason? Just that we weren’t rational and calm enough to be a good Stoic during that time?

Nietzsche’s going to say think of all the stuff you miss OUT on in life…when you TYRANNIZE yourself like this…JUST for the ability to feel more TRANQUIL all the time. You become TRANQUILIZED.

First of all: when all you do is try to conform every event that happens to you to FIT four cardinal virtues in justice courage wisdom and temperance…you miss out on the ability to EVER create your OWN moral approach… that TAKES your actual life and circumstances… and CHOOSES a way of acting that corresponds with them.

That’s one thing you will NEVER be doing as a Stoic. No, you just gotta cosplay as Marcus Aurelius every day as a grown adult. Might as well be dressing up as him for Halloween. This is too passive of an approach to EVER be life affirming if you’re Nietzsche.

Second, for him: ALL of these non-ideal things that happen to people…contrary to a STOIC’S idea of self-transformation… it’s THESE MOMENTS to Nietzsche, of suffering and excess, that often LEAD someone to develop qualities that allow them to do great things.

Greatness often requires EXCESS. Sometimes it requires intense emotions. Sometimes quitting your job out of anger at your boss… puts you on a different path in life where you end up living more fully. Sometimes going to a music festival and getting lost emotionally in a song or something…is a moment that leads someone to transformation that changes the course of their life.

But again if you’re the Stoics…all this stuff is just indulgent, and excessive…and Nietzsche says if a stoic thinks becoming a more moral person is just keeping yourself as CENTERED and IN THE MIDDLE as much as POSSIBLE…then he’s going to say that’s an entire APPROACH to life… that really does CREATE a lot of mediocre people. In practice.

You know, the picture of a Stoic sage to him… is something like an old man…sitting around, who is constantly safe, and luke warm, and unambitious about everything…just a person whose BIGGEST ambition I guess…is to rationally subordinate EVERYTHING about their experience…as their primary FUNCTION in life. That’s what they get up every day and try to do.

It’s a picture of a person he says that minimizes the PLEASURE they get…to be able to minimize the PAIN they get.

They MINIMIZE the intense situations they put themselves in that might actually lead to growth…because to NOT do that…would be morally irresponsible, it aligns my life in a way that goes AGAINST those four arbitrary virtues I’ve for some reason COMMITTED myself to. This is a pointless limitation from a Nietzschean perspective.

In fact he lumps the Stoics in with what he calls the: improvers of life from the history of philosophy.

He’s saying it sarcastically when he says it. They’re not ACTUALLY improving what a human life is…but he’s saying their ENTIRE GOAL from the beginning… is BUILT around the idea that we need to MAKE human life DIFFERENT, and CORRECT it in some way. Follow this set of protocols and the HORROR of what life is will be FIXED for you.

Nietzsche wants nothing to do with this. Again, he wants nothing more than to FACE what life is as HEAD ON as POSSIBLE. He has this funny line about the Stoics where he says, “Is our life really so painful and burdensome that it would be advantageous for us to trade it for a fossilized Stoic way of life? Things are not bad enough for us that they have to be bad for us in the Stoic style!”.

And this really does sum up where Nietzsche is coming from: the Stoics don’t affirm life at the level that he thinks is necessary to become who you truly are. He thinks they deny big pieces of life, then fossilize it, and they do this ALL for the sake of being able to rationally control it, and maintain a state of calm.

Now a Stoic might say back to all this you know what Nietzsche…you’re misunderstanding a lot about where I’m coming from…and one of the major things you’re misunderstanding…is the ORDER that a lot of this stuff happens in.

For example, YES, Stoics are often calm and tranquil if they’re making the right judgments about things. But the goal ISN’T for a Stoic to have calmness and tranquility at all costs…remember Stoicism is a type of virtue ethics. The REAL goal a Stoic needs to focus on is adherence to the virtues.

And SHOULD, calmness and tranquility BE a common BYPRODUCT of living as rationally as we can…well then that’s just a matter of coincidence. You can’t just SAY we’re people that value CALM over everything else simply because we happen to be CALM most of the time.

But as it turns out: Nietzsche wasn’t the only one to SEND this kind of criticism over in the Stoic direction. Arthur Schopenhauer ALSO thought that the Stoics were DOING things in this area…that the STOICS didn’t even know they were doing.

Schopenhauer thought Stoicism… was an elaborate, sophisticated collection of ideas… that is CENTERED around the avoidance of suffering. That’s the MAIN GOAL of Stoicism.

See it turns out: it matters a LOT…whether the avoidance of suffering is the goal…or whether the goal is to stick to behaviors, that HAPPEN TO PRODUCE less suffering.

Should be said: BOTH of these are gonna be MISTAKES to Schopenhauer, but he’d probably want to START his critique of the Stoics by calling them out for what he thinks they actually are.

These are people that GO throughout their life, they come across suffering…and then they TRAIN themselves to react with indifference, and resilience towards that suffering.

What this means is that regardless of what the stoics SAY they’re doing…Schopenhauer thinks Stoicism is a movement that is Eudaimonistic. YOU-DIE. Just a fancy way of saying… that it’s part of the tradition from around the time that Stoicism was created, along with the ethics of Aristotle, along with the other Hellenistic schools….where the GOAL of ethics from this tradition was what they called Eudaimonia… YOU-DIE-MOANIA. Literally well, spirit, for schopenhauer essentially the reduction of suffering. In other words: the TRUE GOAL of Stoicism for him…IS the inner peace of mind, free from suffering. The virtues, become just things that are instrumental to be able to GET there.

Now good question here is: why would this even matter? I mean reducing suffering sounds pretty good to me. I don’t really have a PROBLEM with that.

But for Schopenhauer, this IS a big problem. Suffering to him… is not something that’s optional that we can try to REMOVE. Suffering just IS an intrinsic part of life. Any approach…that talks about removing suffering as the ultimate goal…he thinks is ALWAYS going to be based on some kind of an illusion.

And for something that CALLS itself a moral approach to life…for it to make its CHIEF concern to REMOVE something AS necessary as suffering is…well first of all this is almost paradoxical Schopenhauer says. It CERTAINLY isn’t morality.

In fact he says at one point that things like Stoicism…should really be filed under the category of “ancient advice” more than it should morality. I mean you can SEE how much Stoicism has reducing suffering as it’s main goal…when you consider how DIFFERENT it is to other moral approaches.

Schopenhauer says: a Stoic will come across suffering in the world…say they feel some intense anger after seeing an injustice, maybe it’s heartbreak, maybe they get a long term illness doesn’t matter…the STOIC’S job in every ONE of these circumstances…is to CORRECT the judgments that LEAD to that feeling of suffering, so that they don’t have to feel it anymore.

Now, OTHER moral approaches look at suffering totally different. A Christian may come across suffering for example…and they generally aren’t people that are trying to get AWAY from it.

They sit IN the suffering…and learn to work THROUGH it…because in THIS kind of approach BEING in the suffering… is WORTH it to them for the SAKE of some higher moral ideal. This is a totally different approach than the Stoics have.

One sits IN the suffering and finds a way through it…the other is constantly trying to FIX the suffering, as though its a defect of human life.

Which leads to ANOTHER big difference Schopenhauer sees between these approaches: the Stoic approach is incredibly SELFISH, by comparison.

Meaning it’s always, all about ME, FEELING less SUFFERING. ME, ME ME. Correcting all my judgments…so that I don’t gotta feel anything but total peace of mind, THAT’S the main goal.

If other people AROUND me are suffering at an emotional level, well look those JUDGMENTS they’re making about their situation are just a matter of IGNORANCE. Maybe I can try to educate them…but other than that…can I REALLY do anything to help them? They gotta help THEMSELVES.

Now someone could say back to this: but what about the fact that Stoics often DO help people. I mean Marcus Aurelius was an emperor. Epictetus spent his life trying to educate people. These don’t sound like selfish people to me!

To which Schopenhauer might ask: yeah, but WHY are they helping other people around them?

It’s because if they DON’T…then it might mess with my CHI…these people and their problems are going to mess UP this hard earned peace of mind I’ve cultivated from learning to judge things in a Stoic way. In other words: this is coming from a SELFISH place, ultimately.

And this leads us to one of the big problems Schopenhauer thinks the stoics run into when it comes to morality…it’s what happens when you try to REPLACE morality…with some regimen that allows you to REMOVE SUFFERING from your life.

These are two VERY DIFFERENT activities to Schopenhauer.

See to him…morality BEGINS…when you start to internalize the suffering that other people are enduring around you.

To see another person suffering, WRITHING in the street over something…and to have your FIRST response be: well I need to make sure I’m not feeling too intensely about this right now…I need to keep steady and calm about all this that I’m seeing…what if that’s not the sign of a moral sage…what if that’s the sign of a person that’s trained themselves to disconnect from the world around them. So that they don’t have to face it, or feel it.

He has a great section when he’s talking about the stoics in his book The World as Will and Representation…where essentially he says imagine a person who’s just intellectually dull. Like imagine someone where they don’t engage with the world at a deep level, they don’t think about things much, and as a result when they come across things, could be the Grand Canyon, could be other people’s suffering…whatever it is this person never finds themselves really feeling much of ANYTHING about it.

Schopenhauer says it’s possible that person could THINK… that they’re just a wise Stoic…someone that’s cultivated, JUST the right amount of rational acceptance that now they don’t get LOST in the PASSIONS anymore in their life like all those less ENLIGHTENED people.

But again: REALLY this could be just a selfish, unfeeling person that’s putting in very little EFFORT. He says maybe Stoicism is something that comes EASIER to ACCEPT, to people that are uninspired to begin with.

In fact if we accept Schopenhauer’s premise here…say you lived in a society…where you thought there were a GROWING NUMBER of people who tended to be selfish, and emotionally disconnected and alienated from their fellow people…well wouldn’t that be the EXACT kind of society where it would be POPULAR…to watch a video on Marcus Aurelius one day, HEAR his whole moral approach…and be like YEAH, now THAT’S some wise STUFF right there! THOSE are the kind of ideas that I think are the best way to live, what a great GUY!

For Schopenhauer: to think it’s BENEATH you… to emotionally grieve over something…or to feel compassion for someone who’s suffering…to think you need to GOVERN that AWAY somehow in order to be a better person…that’s not a sign that you’ve arrived at some deep moral insight. It’s a sign you’re a part of a movement… that places self centered peace of mind above everything else.

But again: compassion…is WHERE true morality BEGINS for Schopenhauer. FAR from the cosmopolitanism of Stoicism, which he thought was just a rational duty towards others FOR YOURSELF ultimately, the word he uses for true compassion literally translates to “suffering with”. It starts with internalizing and truly FEELING the experience of the other.

So when things HAPPEN to us in the external world as they say… you don’t FILE them away into class of things you call “indifferent”...no, the absolute FIRST step…is you try to find your CONNECTION to the things that are happening, so you might actually be able to understand it and DO something about it.

Now another way to PUT what we’re talking about here is to say that morality seems to be centered around getting outside of YOURSELF, to an extent. It seems to be RENOUNCING something about your OWN, individual will…and surrendering your will through compassion.

And it’s right here that we can see the OTHER major problem that Schopenhauer’s going to have with the Stoics: when your BIGGEST goal is to try to remove SUFFERING from the equation…you end up missing out on all that suffering has to TEACH you.

I mean if one GOAL for the Stoics is personal transformation…think of how being in intense sadness, for example, can TEACH you something about what it is to strive for things and have them taken from you. Think of how compassion, again, AWAKENS your ability to read the suffering of others accurately. Think of how lonliness…can strip away distractions, and bring someone to a place where they come to reflect on their own existence. Think of how boredom…might show someone how satisfaction in a moment never lasts, and how we’re ALWAYS striving for something more. We never seem to have enough.

Suffering has the ability in other words… when you meet it head on and are not always trying to FIX it…it has the ability to teach us things about the nature of our existence that simply CONTROLLING yourself towards predefined virtues, can NEVER provide to someone.

More than that to Schopenhauer…even if you disagreed with EVERYTHING he’s said so FAR about how IMPORTANT suffering is…he still would come back with the argument that if you pay attention closely…everything the Stoics are doing to try to get RID of suffering…isn’t really working ANYWAY.

That the Stoics STILL SUFFER, ALL the TIME.

Read any Stoic journal like Meditations and consider how much even a DEVOTED follower like Marcus Aurelius, talks about he comes up short until the very end of his life. But WORSE than that the Stoic, Schopenhauer thinks, often suffers MORE than someone who just comes ACROSS the suffering. Because they end up suffering TWICE: not only do they suffer for the thing just normally…but then in their attempt to TRAIN themselves to keep CENTERED all the time…they end up adding on a whole OTHER layer of suffering on TOP of the original thing…as they try to unnaturally suppress it.

So as you can no doubt guess…Schopenhauer’s going to be a fan of at least STARTING from a place…where we acknowledge the suffering of life and how inevitable the whole process is for the kinds of creatures we are. But where do we go from there?

Is he saying we gotta lay around and suffer all day just because it's a part of life? Turn off the AC in your car…give your kids only the worst flavors of capri sun, just learn to accept the world’s against you.

Well, no, in a way he ALSO thinks we need to do something serious in response to suffering. He just thinks the Stoic project… doesn’t actually solve the problem. In fact, Stoicism is a HALF-measure in the eyes of Schopenhauer. It’s TOO affirming of worldly, selfish drives… to EVER realize the true nature of suffering and human life.

Schopenhauer believes that suffering comes from something he calls the WILL.

Now he’s not talking about YOUR will…like in the way that you WILL yourself to not eat ice cream or something. Think of the will as something going on at a metaphysical level…that is a single, blind, aimless FORCE that underlies EVERYTHING that you ever see in the world.

This will… pulls rocks towards the earth through the force of gravity. It drives plants to grow, animals to hunt. And in the case of us human beings…the will is something we experience through things like hunger, fear, rage, jealousy, ambition…the WILL is the thing that KEEPS us in the kinds of lives humans typically lead…where we restlessly STRIVE for things that we want…and then never actually GET the things that we WANT for any real length of time.

We may accomplish a goal, get temporary satisfaction in a moment…but then even just a few moments later… we’re restlessly striving AGAIN for the NEXT thing. And then the NEXT thing. The kind of neurotic grasping for things that not only keeps the SPECIES going for Schopenhauer…but it makes the whole universe go round.

Anyway so you can understand: that if you viewed THIS as the picture of what a human LIFE is…then this obviously isn’t going to be something you’re gonna SOLVE…by just controlling your reactions to things and trying to become more COURAGEOUS or something.

You can ALSO imagine how, from the perspective of Schopenhauer, if you were to spend most of your life trying to be a good Stoic…how he thinks that might actually work AGAINST you learning about the real situation you’re in. This is, yet another LAYER to what he thinks a commitment to Stoicism misses OUT on in practice.

But now that we have this picture… of this underlying WILL that’s RESPONSIBLE for suffering…one of the most important things that Schopenhauer thinks the Stoics are missing out on…is any area of human experience that ISN’T centered around the INDIVIDUAL will.

What he MEANS is that if you’re a Stoic…every second of your LIFE is spent as an individual, moral agent…that has things HAPPEN to you… and then WILLS yourself ONTO the situation and tries to CONTROL your judgments and reactions the best you possibly can.

But isn’t there ALSO…a whole other side to what life is…that isn’t just about freedom OF the will…but freedom FROM the will?

See Schopenhauer thinks if you really want to deal with the problem of suffering then you have to deal with the problem of constantly listening to this underlying will.

And there’s several steps he thinks you could TAKE along a spiritual path that tries to DEAL with this problem: the first step would be to NOTICE… how we’re constantly willing ourselves and constantly making choices…and then to try to get OUT of that NEED to constantly be making choices. In other words the FIRST step for him on this path is aesthetic contemplation.

To try to get to a place where you’re not seeing the world as something for you to USE all the time…and that when you practice being what he calls a “pure, will-less subject of knowledge”...you’ll find that the SUPER strong URGE you usually have to STRIVE for whatever it is you want…that voice starts to quiet inside of you, just a little.

Once you’ve done THAT for Schopenhauer…the next thing you could do is practice compassion. You know, as we’ve already talked about…REALLY trying to INTERNALIZE the suffering of other people and see things from a perspective other than your own…this is going to lead to ANOTHER level… of stepping OUTSIDE of this individual will that leads to suffering.

LAST thing he thinks a person can do…is an ascetic renunciation of the will altogether. Plenty of HISTORY here of people practicing in this sort of way: fasting, chastity, practicing restraint when you strongly want something, even just working to be more humble when your ego could otherwise take over…all of this will LEAD a person Schopenhauer thinks…to just a quieter mode of being altogether.

And it’s not that the will is gonna disappear and you’re not gonna want things anymore. But he thinks devoted practice like this ACTUALLY HELPS the problem, in an area that a practicing Stoic, that never considers anything but Stoicism, will never even know exists. A life centered around again: not just freedom OF the will…but freedom FROM the will.

So after these two episodes: is there anything that’s MISSING from Stoicism. Is what’s MISSING from Stoicism…the very thing that’s ATTRACTIVE about it. As always I leave it to YOU to decide where you stand on all this. And as always the goal here is to entertain ideas without necessarily accepting them. Plenty of shows out there that’ll tell you what to think if that’s the service you want…this podcast isn’t one of them.

If you value the show as an educational resource: Patreon.com/philosophizethis. Thanks for telling a friend about the show and most of all…

Thank you for listening. Talk to you next time.