Episode #011 - Transcript
Thank you for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday, and I hope you love the show.
Stoicism is typically broken down into three parts: logic, physics, and ethics. The chronology of its initial development in the Hellenistic Age is also typically broken down into three parts: the early stoa, middle stoa, and late stoa. Each phase of its development made notable breakthroughs in different areas. But it’s important to note a few things. By far the most popular and most notable thinkers of the stoic school are three people: Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. Unfortunately, they didn’t live during the early or middle stoa periods. All three of them made their contributions during the late stoa. And they didn’t drastically change logic or physics. All three of them made their greatest contributions in the field of ethics.
To talk about the ideas of these three men alone would be a very pigeon-holed view of stoicism. But on the other hand, to do an entire episode on each one of them would be filled with redundancy because two thirds of their entire philosophy is almost exactly the same as the other two guys. Because of this, next episode will be almost solely dedicated to understanding stoic ethics and the great ideas the three of those men laid out.
But in the meantime, it’s impossible to understand where they’re coming from with their ethics without first understanding the other two parts, logic and physics. The stoics saw logic, physics, and ethics as completely interrelated and dependent on each other. They compared it to an egg with the three of them representing the shell, the egg yolk, and the egg white, respectively—all three of them combined together serving a more complete purpose than any one of them in isolation.
The things stoicism is most known for are stoic ethics and stoicism as a bridge to a Western world dominated by Christianity. Think of today’s episode as a first encounter with stoicism, because we’re going to see it later. Think of it as a coat of primer and an explanation of the very important groundwork of the founding of stoicism, how it evolved from cynicism and, once it matured and reached the end of the early stoa, how its well-defined and well-tested ideas acted as a springboard for the great stoic ethics that were to come and made it possible for stoicism to ascend above the ashes of its rival philosophical schools and become the dominant philosophy of Rome.
That said, there’s something else I got to say. And the closer we get to modern times, the less I’m going to have to say this. But the exact sourcing of a lot of the ideas that come during the period of the early stoa are a little shaky. The ideas definitely were there. We can definitely attach these ideas to the period. The problem arises when trying to assign a particular idea to a particular philosopher.
Three big stoic philosophers make up the early stoa: Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus. We don’t have a single complete work of any of these guys, just fragments. And the sources we do have on them come from either later non-philosophers or later hostile Christian writers. If this were a perfect world, we would have all of their complete works, and we could dive into all of them. But the fragments that we do have in the later commentary on all three of them combine to make a pretty solid picture of what the founding principles of stoicism really were.
We’ve all seen some depiction of a post-apocalyptic world in this giant media landscape that we’re all immersed in. And we’ve all heard those really tough guys that stack encyclopedias on the bill of their hats so that they’re super flat—we’ve all heard those guys talk about how they would be the ones to thrive if some huge disaster happened. But the fact of the matter is, you can’t know that. You never know how you’re going to respond to pandemonium until you’re surrounded by it. Everyone reacts differently. Some people do thrive. Some people curl up into the fetal position. The same thing can be said for chaos and adversity that isn’t as immediate as that, like the kind that the people of the Hellenistic Age found themselves in politically.
My dad, for the very short time I knew him, always said that if he ever found himself in some zombie apocalypse or a volcanic eruption or something where the end of the world is imminent, that he’d just grab a lawn chair. He’d sit up on his roof with his friends, crack open a beer, and just watch it all go down, watch everyone scramble and panic. Well, if you put it that way, it sounds like an incredibly white trash thing to do. But if everyone finds their own way to cope with the zombie apocalypse anyway, removing yourself from all the stress and anxiety of that rat race of survival, that probably when it all comes down to it is going to be completely futile anyway, and just hanging out with your friends trying to relax and enjoy the spectacle of it all—I mean, it really doesn’t sound that bad.
In fact, it sounds a little like the Epicurean approach to the zombie apocalypse of the Hellenistic Age. You would live in a commune with your closest friends, away from the busy city, not concerning yourself with things like amassing wealth or changing the world—all that stuff wasn’t really going to matter much anyway. You should just relax and pursue real pleasure.
Well, if the Epicureans were the people sitting up on their roof watching everything go down in the zombie apocalypse, then the stoics would be survivors of the zombie apocalypse, if there were any. The stoics wouldn’t be the people just panicking, running around flailing their arms everywhere, because they would recognize that their situation definitely wasn’t looking that good, but they wouldn’t be emotionally affected by it because they’ve accepted their fate, whatever it is. And they realize that even though this zombie apocalypse doesn’t look good for me on the surface, ultimately for the universe it’s for the best.
The stoics wouldn’t be the people that don’t have a plan either, the people that are just following orders—you know, one member of a mass exodus of people all heading towards a military base in the distance. The stoics would use their natural ability to reason to make the wisest and most virtuous decision, because at least that decision was in harmony with nature. See, because when it all comes down to it, a lot of people talk about Epicureans and stoics not just as rival philosophical schools of their time, but they even go so far as to say that they’re two completely different kinds of people.
Now, I don’t know if I entirely agree with the idea that they can be seen as opposites. After all, they were both schools descendent of Socrates; they were both interested in practical philosophy and the good life. There’s actually a lot of huge similarities. But at the same time, I understand where these people are coming from. There was an article published in 1869 that talks about the two different kinds of people that make up Epicureanism and stoicism and the common personality traits that you find in either of them. “There have ever been stern, upright, self-controlled, and courageous men, actuated by a pure sense of duty, capable of high efforts of self-sacrifice, somewhat intolerant of the frailties of others, somewhat hard and unsympathizing in the ordinary intercourse of society, but rising to heroic grandeur as the storm lowered upon their path, and more ready to relinquish life in the cause they believe to be true.
“There have also always been men of easy tempers and of amiable disposition, gentle, benevolent, and pliant, cordial friends and forgiving enemies, selfish at heart, yet ever ready, when it is possible, to unite their gratifications with those of others, averse to all enthusiasm, mysticism, utopias and superstition, with little depth of character or capacity for self-sacrifice, but admirably fitted to impart and to receive enjoyment and to render the course of life easy and harmonious. The first are by nature stoics, and the second Epicureans.”
Now, when I’m reading that, I’m reading it almost like it’s a horoscope in the Sunday paper. I’m trying to find things about it that relate to me. I’m trying to label myself. I’m trying to say, “That’s me! I’m a stoic!” But I think I end up falling somewhere in the middle. And I think most people would. If you compare stoicism and Epicureanism, there’s similarities and differences. Both schools offered a way to cultivate a tranquil state of mind, but they laid out completely different ways to get there.
Life in an Epicurean commune was about living a simple, self-governed life aimed at feeling pleasure. But stoicism was more of a challenge people put themselves through. It’s kind of like an obstacle course. Both schools agreed that we don’t really need much more than our basic needs met to achieve a true state of happiness. The difference lied in where you focused your efforts once those basic needs were met. Followers of Epicurus thought you should dedicate your time to attaining pleasure. The stoics thought you should dedicate your time to living more virtuously.
Both schools thought you shouldn’t go throughout your life scared about what might happen to you or scared of death or the gods or whatever you’re scared of. There’s nothing to worry about. The Epicureans said you had nothing to worry about because you’re just a collection of atoms anyway, a collection that was randomly thrown together and eventually will break down and go on to form something else. So there’s no afterlife to fear. The stoics thought you had nothing to fear because you didn’t have the slightest bit of control over it anyway. They preached the idea of resigned acceptance. The universe has been created and destroyed a seemingly infinite number of times, and things pan out in the exact same way, the absolute perfect way, each and every time. You have a fate, whatever it is. And it’s pointless to be worried about it.
To find the origins of stoicism, you have to start with the story of a guy named Zeno and a guy named Diogenes, both of which are names we’ve mentioned on the podcast before, and both of which are entirely not the same people. This is actually the third Diogenes we’ve mentioned on the podcast. And I’ve always said it. If I could go back in time to any point in history, I’d choose to go back to this period of Greco-Roman dominance, and I’d become the world’s greatest cold-reading psychic ever. I mean, I’d just walk up to people and say, “I’m sensing a Diogenes in your life.” “Yeah! That’s my dad’s name and my brother’s name and my dog’s name. In fact, I know 12 people named Diogenes. How do you do it?” My name would be heralded throughout the streets until the people rounded me up and burned me at the stake.
But anyway, the founder of stoicism is a guy named Zeno—more commonly referred to in history books as Zeno of Citium. Wait, actually, let me start here. Have you guys ever heard of a stoa? Well, of course you have. I talked about it last episode. Plato set up his Academy to the west of Athens. Then Aristotle set up his Lyceum to the east of Athens. Diogenes was to the south of Athens, and Zeno right in the center. We were so close to having a four-cardinal-direction way to remember these four schools. But hey, he was on the northern side of the Athenian Agora. That’s good enough for me.
He taught in a place known as the Stoa Poikile, or the painted stoa. See, if you were walking around the Agora at the time and you walked into this particular stoa, you would have seen a place with a crazy energy all around you. I mean, years before Zeno was even born, right around the time of the Peloponnesian War when the Thirty Tyrants were in charge of Athens, 1,400 people were sentenced to death right in that very stoa. If you walked into the stoa, on the back wall you’d see beautiful paintings just covering it of gods, of Greek military conquests—one by Polygnotos showing the great victory of Marathon over the Persians.
And right in the middle of all this, right in the middle of this ambiance you would see a tall, thin man walking back and forth, gesturing with his arms, lecturing a group of people standing or sitting around him. And this man would have been known as Zeno, the founder of stoicism. In fact, their pastime of holding lectures in this painted stoa is how they got their name—the stoics. Well, that and their original name of Zenonians just didn’t have a good ring to it. And that’s not a joke. I’m serious. What would you rather be called, a Zenonian or a stoic?
Zeno was born in 334 BC, 13 years after the death of Plato. And early in life Zeno went to an oracle, the oracle of the Greek god Apollo. And he asked the oracle, “How do I get the best life possible?” Well, the oracle says back to him, “You should take on the complexion of the dead.” Well, I didn’t get it at first, so I looked up the word complexion in the dictionary. I’m kind of embarrassed. And Merriam Webster has two definitions. The first one is the color or appearance of the skin, especially on the face. That’s what I thought it was. Now, call me crazy, but I don’t think the oracle was giving Zeno beauty secrets here. I don’t think he was telling him that for a happy life your face needs to look less alive. So, I looked up the second definition. And it says the general appearance or character of something. Now, that starts to make a little more sense. I mean, why would it benefit a live person to take on the general character of a dead person? In what area does a living person envy a dead person?
Well, the story goes, Zeno thought about it for a while. Then he decided to read a bunch of ancient books. And that’s ancient in 300 BC, so that’s really saying something. And then the next truly conclusive page we have out of his diary is that in around 311 BC Zeno just survives a terrible shipwreck, swims up onto shore, and moves to Athens. Now, why did he just suddenly decide that his life of being a merchant was over and that going to Athens and studying philosophy was a good idea right then?
Surviving a shipwreck in 300 BC—the odds of that must have been like storming the beaches of Normandy. It had to have been intense. I mean, there’s no helicopter rescue in 300 BC. There’s no lifejackets in 300 BC. Not only would it have been terrifying and probably something you’ve never experienced or even seen before in your life, but it also would have been an extreme test of physical endurance if you wanted to live. Zeno no doubt almost died in that shipwreck. He was clinging to life just Michael Phelps-ing it to shore.
And now of all times, this is the time you choose to make a complete career change into answering questions about the nature of existence? He’d found the complexion of the dead, alright. No doubt, he probably thought he’d gotten a little too close to the general character of the dead. I mean, after a close call like that, Zeno was ready to go skydiving, rocky mountain climbing, 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu. This near-death experience changed his outlook on life.
And quick aside, if you want to take something from Zeno’s life, find a way to go get in a shipwreck. Not really, but the sentiment of what I’m about to say has been hijacked and squandered by clichés for I don’t know how many years. But it’s worth saying. You want to drastically improve your life? Find a way to think of each day and each moment as a gift. Fabricate the feeling state you gain from a near death experience without actually having one, and you’ll live a thousand lifetimes. And I’m convinced this is what Zeno was feeling then.
Zeno survives the shipwreck. He shows up in Athens and sits down at a bookstore. And he starts reading a book by Xenophon. You might remember that name from our episode on Socrates. He was one of the only four sources historians have that talk about Socrates in any depth. And Zeno was reading his book about Socrates way back then. He instantly loved Socrates, so much so that he went up to the bookstore owner and asked him where in the world he could find a man like Socrates because he wanted to learn from him. So, the shopkeeper just looks outside of the shop, and like a scene out of a movie, he points to a scraggly man that’s just hobbling past the shop and says, “Right there!”
The man was Crates, cynic philosopher, staunch admirer of Socrates, and an all-around well-liked guy for his time. For Zeno, the decision was easy. He would become his student and learn the philosophy of cynicism. Now, as we said before, stoicism and Epicureanism were heavily influenced by Socrates and his practical approach to philosophy. Cynicism was another embodiment of the Socratic lifestyle. In fact, the first cynic was a guy named Antisthenes who was actually a student of Socrates. And there were other cynics that achieved immense popularity like Crates. But no cynic is more memorable or more devoted to the cause than Diogenes of Sinope.
To somebody that didn’t know what cynicism was, this guy would look absolutely insane. I mean, just imagine Charles Manson living in a tub on the streets. Diogenes lived in a tub. He’d yell out at people who were just minding their own business in the marketplace. He would famously heckle Plato during his lectures and try to sabotage them. Some stories tell about him carrying a lantern around in the daytime, shining it in people’s faces, saying he’s looking for an honest man.
The original Greek word that was later latinized into the word cynic meant dog-like. Really it was just referring to an extreme animalistic rejection to human conventions, but Diogenes took it literally sometimes. He would bark at people. He would lay around in public completely nude. He would do other activities in public that are not appropriate for a family show like this one. There’s a story of people messing with him, and when they’re eating at this banquet, they throw him their bones as though he were a dog. So he does the natural thing; he runs up to them and starts peeing all over their legs like he’s a dog.
He was so well known as a philosopher and social miscreant that Alexander the Great wanted to meet him when he came through town. And the story goes that Alexander’s walking up to him. He sees Diogenes on the ground. And he introduces himself, and he says, “Is there anything I can do for you?” And Diogenes goes, “Yeah, move a couple steps to the left. You’re blocking my sunlight.” Then Alexander laughs and says, “If I were not Alexander, I would want to be Diogenes.” Then Diogenes says, “Well, if I were not Diogenes, I would also want to be Diogenes.”
Now, my first reaction when I hear this story is, Diogenes, what a character! And then my second reaction right after that is, why did Alexander the Great say he would want to be Diogenes? And I think I understand now. See, Alexander the Great was the most powerful man in the world, constantly surrounded by guards. Whatever he wants, he gets, even entire empires sometimes. There’s nothing any normal man can do to him. And in a strange way, Diogenes is the same. He’s so devoid of any pride, possessions, relationships. There’s definitely a freedom in having nothing to lose. And I think this is what Alexander was getting at.
But make no mistake, it’s not like Diogenes was doing all this stuff simply for the sake of being strange. It’s not like he was Lady Gaga. His lifestyle was a representation, albeit a very extreme one, of cynic philosophy. Cynicism was about achieving a tranquil state of mind. The difference between it and something like Epicureanism was the method of getting there. Now, this tranquility can also be thought of as self-sufficiency because you’re completely unaffected by things like unfair rules or unrealistic desires. The cynics called these external restrictions. Cynics believe that the good life, or the life that’s worth living, is a virtuous life. And a virtuous life is one that’s in agreement with nature.
But they aren’t talking about recycling or not dumping toxic waste into the ocean, at least not exclusively. They’re talking about being in harmony with our own human nature and our place within nature. Now, part of our human nature is having the ability to use reason to better understand our nature. And if you were to live in perfect harmony with nature, there wouldn’t be any external restrictions. You would be self-sufficient. Happiness is living in accordance with our rational understanding of nature.
Now, what Diogenes says is that human nature is not to be part of this society with all of its little conventions and restrictions and rituals that we go through. All these desires—the desire to be a movie star or the desire to have a giant vault of money or to be president of the United States—all these desires are things that society has implanted in us. Diogenes just took this to an extreme and said that we shouldn’t care about whether we live in a tub on the streets or not or whether we look like Charles Manson carrying around a lantern at high noon. We should live a life in accordance with nature and do whatever we want whenever we want to do it. The more we do that, the closer we’ll get to achieving this tranquil state of mind.
There’s a famous story about Zeno where he’s a student of Crates learning the ropes of cynic thought. And apparently he was a really good student when it came to learning the philosophy, but Crates thought he was way too modest. I mean, to be a true cynic back then you needed to give up any semblance of pride imaginable. You needed to be ready to accept something mortifying happen to you and not care at all because you reject all these social conventions that tell you that shouldn’t happen. So, to teach him a lesson, Crates gives Zeno an assignment. He forces him to carry around a pot of lentil soup everywhere he goes.
Now, Zeno, embarrassed of having to walk around with a pot of soup—understandable—tries to hide the pot underneath his robe so that no one sees it. And Crates with a move that in retrospect was completely uncalled for, takes his staff and smashes the pot. So now Zeno is really embarrassed, lentil soup running down his legs. He runs off, tries to hide or clean himself off. And Crates yells after him as he’s running away, “Why run away, my little Phoenician? Nothing terrible has befallen you.”
It's these sorts of traumatic situations that probably led to Zeno not being entirely on board with the cynics. He liked a lot of what they had to say, but he wasn’t totally satisfied. Because if he was, he would have just become a cynic, right? Cynicism was an evolution of Socrates, and stoicism was an evolution of cynicism.
So, you had these cynics like Crates and Diogenes around for a long time. There was kind of echoes of Daoism in there, you know, the idea that a lot of society that most people see as progress is actually regression and that we should return back to our more natural state. It’s clear that Zeno and stoicism for that matter was heavily impacted by two main ideas from cynicism. One is the idea that the only thing you need to live a good life, a happy life, is virtue. The other is the notion that the best way to live life can be found by looking to nature. He liked those ideas, but Zeno thought something was missing.
One of the main things that’s missing from cynicism that ends up being a key element in stoicism is the idea of physics and metaphysics, an explanation of the universe. Where is it in cynicism? The cynics were direct descendants of Socrates. It’s understandable for them to think of these questions as too abstract to be productive. But for the stoics and Zeno, it just wasn’t good enough. I mean, a big part of his method of achieving a state of tranquility is the idea of fate, because when you believe in fate, you realize that worrying about all these things you can’t control is pointless. But you need to be able to prove that fate exists. And in order to do that, you need to ask all these abstract questions. There needs to be some scientific explanation for why you shouldn’t be worried. It’s similar to the way the Epicureans needed the explanation that you’re just made of atoms and void to justify their belief that there isn’t some afterlife you should be scared of. You’re just going to dissolve one day.
So, Zeno didn’t see it like the cynics. He didn’t see it as pointless speculation. It certainly may be speculation, but it definitely had a place in practical philosophy as Zeno saw it. So, he left Crates. He decided to try to get a different perspective on everything, maybe try to further his education about how the universe was formed. Some people say he studied at Plato’s Academy, obviously years after Plato had been dead. Some people say he just studied the curriculum of the Academy under a guy named Xenocrates. But either way, he was obviously influenced by the ideas of the Academy in many ways. And ultimately, he ends up combining the elements of his time with the cynics and his education from the Academy to make the most successful school of thought in the Hellenistic Age.
The idea that something bad may happen to you, and even though initially it looks like there’s nothing good that can possibly come from it, but when it’s all said and done everything happens for the best—this idea was a key element Plato laid out in his work the Timaeus. And it seems obvious in his education Zeno was heavily influenced by this. But there were a lot of differences between Plato’s universe and Zeno’s universe.
Zeno, like Epicurus and unlike Plato, had a materialist view of the universe. He believed that the only things that existed were material bodies. There is no immortal soul or afterlife or transcendent world of forms. All that exists is right in front of our eyes. Nature, and the entire universe for that matter, should be thought of as an all-encompassing whole—all animated and governed by a divine logos which can also be thought of as God’s will, reason, providence, fate, all wrapped up into one. And humans should be thought of as parts of that whole—our ability to reason all fractions or sparks of that divine logos. The important thing to take from that is that everything happens the way it’s supposed to and according to a plan governed by this divine logos.
Stoic physics really begin with Plato and the teachings of the Academy that Zeno no doubt was privy to. There’s a scene in Plato’s book called Sophist where he’s asking some people what is real. How do we know something is real? And one answer someone gives is that something is real if it has the capacity to act or to be acted upon. Stoicism and Zeno likes this definition, but they add that only bodies can act or be acted upon, thus only bodies exist. However, they make it very clear to recognize that it’s very possible to be part of nature without actually existing. Like nonmaterial things, like love or justice or time—these things are imaginary. He called them figments of the mind. The key to achieving a state of mental tranquility is virtue. The key to virtue is living a life that’s in agreement with nature. Hence the well-known stoic maxim that virtue consists in a will that’s in agreement with nature.
Alright, so what is nature? One thing you got to realize—words don’t mean the same things today that they did back then. Just like we talked about with the cynics, being in agreement with nature does not mean going to Yellowstone National Park and picking up trash. Nature to the stoics is God. The stoics were a pantheistic philosophy. Pantheistic means that God is the universe. The definition of God is not how people typically think of God in modern times. God isn’t a homo sapien up in the sky controlling things. God is the universe, which is a material substance that has the ability to reason and uses that reason to structure and control matter to fit its plan.
The stoic philosopher Chrysippus talks about the stoic view of God here, “The universe itself is god and the universal outpouring of its soul; it is the same world’s guiding principle, operating in mind and reason, together with the common nature of things and the totality that embraces all existence; then the foreordained might and necessity of the future; then fire and the principle of aether; then those elements whose natural state is one of flux and transition such as water, earth, and air; then the sun, the moon, the stars; and the universal existence in which all things are contained.”
Stoics believe that God or nature is inside of everything and affects the outcome of everything even down to the smallest detail. Now, to avoid future confusion, I’m just going to refer to it as nature from now on. This nature is then further bisected down into two types: active and passive. Now, whenever you’re making anything, whether it’s a chair or an iPhone or a universe, for that matter, you need materials to make the thing out of, and then you need someone to assemble it. The passive element of nature is the raw materials, the matter, the physical stuff that things are made up of. But they would just lie there and do nothing if you didn’t have something to set them in motion. The active element of nature is the divine logos, also known as reason, also known as fate. I swear the stoics tried to confuse people with this stuff. This divine logos is the vehicle by which nature does its bidding and affects the outcomes of the universe. So, you can see why the stoics also thought of it as fate.
They thought the universe is made up of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. The passive elements were earth and water, and the active elements were fire and air. Right after the early stoa, stoics had an extremely detailed account of how the universe was created. It’s fantastic. I recommend it if you have about six hours to kill, but the central themes of their story is that in the beginning everything was made of a mixture of fire and air, the active elements, which then transform in various ways to make up the passive elements—earth and water—and then things keep transforming and being guided by this divine logos or reason to form the world that we’re more familiar with. Then everything reverses. The world we’re familiar with turns back into the elements, and the elements turn back into the mixture of fire and air. It’s an endless eternal cycle. And it’s because everything is governed by reason and the fact that that reason has had an infinite number of tries at creating the universe that fate exists.
The stoics believe there’s only one perfect way to do it. And nature or God would never choose to do it in an inferior way. So, things are very predictable, destined if you will. This mixture of fire and air, the fundamental substance that’s in everything, is called Pneuma. There’s a quote by a guy named Stobaeus talking about Chrysippus’ views on the elements and how they make up various things that we see in the world around us. “…fire, air, water, earth, since all other things are composed by means of a particular one of these or more than one of these or all of these—all four in the case of animals and all terrestrial compounds, two in the case of the moon, which is composed by means of fire and air, and just one, in the case of the sun, which is composed by means of fire; for the sun is pure fire.”
It all comes full circle. Remember, the stoics think that to live a good or happy life you need to live a virtuous life. And remember the stoic bumper sticker from earlier: virtue consists in a will that is in agreement with nature. Well, nature is God, and God acts through the divine logos, or the reason that governs all things. So, humans with their very unique ability to reason can think of this reason as a spark or a miniscule fraction of that divine reason. The more you use your reason in accordance with nature, the more virtuous you become, and the more virtuous you become, the more in harmony with nature you are. It’s actually a very nice circle.
This emphasis on humans and their unique ability to reason marking them as distinct from other animals reminds me of a scene from the show Lost. And actually, this crazy, elaborate theory of the universe with fire and air and mystery as though it’s just trying to bait you into watching six seasons on the edge of your seat and then never explain anything—that also reminds me of Lost. I mean, come on, polar bears? What was with the polar bears? I’m sorry, I’m still a little angry. The scene that I’m talking about is between John Locke and that drug addict rock star guy. I’m blanking on his name. “Stay away from my baby…Charlie!” Charlie! You know, I should know that. I named my dog after the guy.
Charlie is trying to quit drugs in the scene. He’s struggling. John Locke has his drugs, and he’s acting as a barrier between Charlie and relapse. And I love this scene because there are so many deep implications here. Charlie is sitting around, barely even able to strum his guitar. He’s sweating. His bones are obviously hurting. He looks like he’s sick. He’s going through withdrawals. Now, John Locke goes up to him and tells him he should go for a walk and that the fresh air would do him well.
So, Charlie starts walking, and he’s by himself in the middle of this thick tropical woods. And he hears something behind him. It’s obviously an animal. It sounds like an angry wild pig of some sort that’s chasing him. So he starts running, and the pig keeps chasing him. It’s very dramatic. And right when the pig is about to get him—or, I mean, I can’t really think of what a pig would do when it kills a human—the pig flies up in the air in an elaborate net trap that John Locke set up to try to catch it.
Now, Locke planned everything out. He set up two traps that day, one for Charlie to be walking and get pursued by the pig, and one for Charlie to unknowingly run the pig into so that John Locke could eat it. Now, at first Charlie is a little upset about being bait for the pig, but then he just completely flips out. He starts demanding his drugs. He starts saying that he’s sick. He starts asking Locke, “Why can’t I have my drugs? Why do you do this to me? Is it to torture me?” And Locke says, “No. It’s to give you a choice. Because being able to make choices based on something other than instinct is the only thing that separates you from him.” And he points to the pig suspended above them in a net trap, obviously not doing too well.
The idea of cultivating your ability to reason in harmony with nature in stoicism is very similar to what John Locke is talking about in this scene. The goal of stoicism was to be completely free of suffering by using our unique ability to reason to make decisions that are in harmony with nature. This state of being was called apatheia. And next episode is going to be all about these kind of things. But the important thing is that as humans the thing we’re best at is thinking or reasoning. And we should use this reason to figure out the way the world actually is, not what we first think it is.
Once we know that, we then realize that the best way to live within the world is to realize that the insignificant problems in our everyday lives don’t really matter that much. Each human is an infinitely small part of an infinitely large universe that’s created and destroyed an infinite number of times. All these little things don’t really matter that much if you use reason. Rational is the opposite of irrational. And humans are most irrational when they’re consumed by their emotions or impulses.
Charlie in this scene represents a human that’s in a state of suffering. He made poor decisions, not using that ability to reason very well. Because if he had, he would have realized that doing drugs would have brought him this suffering. And yet he still continues, overcome by his emotions and impulses, to try to relapse and get his drugs back from Locke. Locke represents the stoic way of looking at things, not just the obvious example of reason when he doesn’t give Charlie his drugs back, but he’s a perfect example of somebody living with a reasoned outlook as the stoics would see it. I mean, multiple traps, using reason to know exactly how the pig and Charlie would react to his traps? He practically saw the pig’s fate before it happened. Not to mention, his character on the show is incredibly tranquil and happy despite the fact that his plane crashed and deserted him on an island. I don’t think the political unrest of the Hellenistic Age would bother John Locke that much.
There’s a good quote by a guy named Sextus Empiricus that talks about this dynamic of stoicism. “The stoics say that man differs from irrational animals because of internal speech, not uttered speech; for crows and parrots and jays utter articulate sound. Nor does he differ from other creatures in virtue of simple expressions, for they too receive these. But in virtue of impressions created by inference and combination. This amounts to man’s possessing of an idea of connection. And he grasps the concept of signal because of this. For signal itself is of the following form: if this, then that. Therefore, the existence of signal follows from the nature and constitution of man.”
We need to start wrapping this up, so let’s get back to the early stoa. Right after the death of Zeno was the next big name in Stoicism, Cleanthes. He was a philosopher by day, manual laborer by night, and somehow found a way to moonlight as a poet in between all that. He wrote a great poem, his most notable work, called “Hymn to Zeus” where he lays out the next evolution of articulating stoic ideas, four of them. One, God provides providential care. Two, the life of virtue is essential to happiness. Three, there is a harmonic unity to the universe. And four, universal reason or logos governs all things.
This was a nice step forward in the organization of ideas, but Cleanthes was easily overshadowed by his student Chrysippus, who some accounts say wrote over seven hundred books. He was the godfather of stoic logic. Now remember, the three main pillars of stoic philosophy are physics, ethics, and logic. We’ve talked about physics, and we’ve made a reasonable case for how it relates to ethics, even though next episode is going to be tying things together much, much more than we did here. But where does logic fit into all this?
Firstly, stoic logic was definitely a huge accomplishment. They have a lot of interesting ideas. And to even be spoken in the same sentence as Aristotle is a massive compliment to their system of logic. But because they lived in a time in such close proximity to Aristotle, they’re usually seen as rivals. And most of the discussion usually devolves into who had it more right in what area. But all the arguments aside, the two systems actually work pretty well together.
Now, I’ve tried to read syllogisms and indemonstrables on the podcast before, and it just doesn’t work well on a purely audio form of communication. But what everyone should understand is that logic was considered one of the three pillars of stoic thought because the stoics thought that understanding logic was understanding the divine logos or reason that governs all things. Logic for them was a very wide topic. It certainly wasn’t just syllogisms or being able to analyze arguments. It included all kinds of things, like rhetoric, grammar, and they even included epistemology.
Think of it as understanding and practicing the most efficient ways of sharpening and honing your ability to reason and live in harmony with nature. They thought that being able to reason well and being able to refute bad arguments that other people attack you with is a surefire sign of a wise man, and that if you could master this art, you would never be fooled or misled by anyone. So it was incredibly important to them.
The later commentator Diogenes—not the crazy Diogenes—writes a pretty good account of the stoic’s view on the importance of logic. “The reason why the stoics adopt these views in logic is to give the strongest possible confirmation to their claim that the wise man is always a dialectician. For all things are observed through the study conducted in discourses, whether they belong to the domain of physics or equally that of ethics. As to logic, that goes without saying.”
Then he goes on later, “Without the study of dialectic the wise man will not be infallible in argument, since dialectic distinguishes the true from the false, and clarifies plausibilities and ambiguous statements. Without it, moreover, it is impossible to ask and answer questions methodically. Precipitancy in argument extends to what actually happens; so people who do not have their impressions trained veer into states of disorder and carelessness. Only in this way will the wise man show himself to be penetrating, sharp witted and someone who, generally, is formidable in argument. For the person whose job it is to discuss and argue correctly is the very person whose job it is to discuss debating topics and to respond to the questions put to him; and these are the functions of the man experienced in dialectic.”
There’s one more thing I want to leave you with this week, and it’s an early stoa view of stoic epistemology. We gather information through our senses, but sometimes these sense experiences deceive us. How do you explain those? Zeno gives a visual demonstration of how to think about stoic epistemology. Zeno said that to truly know something means that you have grasped it in a way where it’s impossible for you to be dissuaded by argument.
He would be giving one of his lectures, probably in the stoa, and he would stretch out his arm in front of him and show his open palm. And he would point to his hand and say, this is perception. Then he would slightly close his fingers, just a little bit, so now he looks like Zeno with arthritis. And he points to his hand now and says, this is assent. Assent is agreement or a belief in something. Then he closes his fist tight and points to it and says, this is comprehension. And then he takes his other hand and grabs his fist, holding it closed. And he says, this is knowledge.
Alright, time for the question of the week. So, earlier in the show we were talking about different reactions people have to an apocalyptic scenario. And we were comparing the different types of people to the different schools of philosophy in the Hellenistic Age. This question is about a scenario a little less severe. Here it is.
Hypothetical scenario: let’s say that an asteroid hit the earth, not a big one. Nobody dies, but the impact of the asteroid knocks out all satellite communication, all phone reception, all the internet connection of the entire world. Let’s also say that in this alternate universe we’ve crafted that the president tells us that they can fix it, but it’s going to be 30 days until they can get it fixed. No phone, no computer, no TV, no DVDs, no electronics for 30 days. Philosophize this. How would you spend that 30 days? What would you do? Who would you spend it with?
Thank you for everything, guys. I’ll talk to you soon.