Donald J. Robertson's Blog, page 17

Beyond Righteous Anger

Having recently finished work on How to Think Like Socrates, I’m delighted to announce that, in addition to the and other existing projects, I’ll be focusing on what I believe to be the most important question facing our society today: the problem of anger.

Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash

I was a cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist, specializing in treating anxiety disorders, but over the years I have increasingly spent more time writing books about Stoic philosophy. (How to Think Like Socrates is my ninth book.) For many years, I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to focus on a specific psychological and social problem, to which Stoic philosophy can be applied. I think it’s often a good idea to return to your roots but approach things from a new perspective.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWe shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time. – T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

While I feel that writing in general terms about Stoic philosophy and self-improvement can benefit many people, based on my experience, more tangible benefits can be achieved by targeting a more specific problem. I’ve chosen to look at how Stoicism can help us overcome our own anger, and deal with the anger of others.

In my opinion, anger represents one of the great psychological epidemics of our time, and its impact on our personal lives, our relationships, and society in general, has been vastly underestimated. Anger can destroy friendships, end marriages, alienate children from parents, in extreme cases it can lead to acts of aggression, and even suicide and murder. Anger can become the catalyst for individuals to commit crimes, for outraged mobs to engage in wanton violence, and in some cases it may even lead to warfare and atrocities such as genocide.

Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Anger can seem like a more serious problem than other unhealthy emotions because of the risk that violence poses to other individuals and society in general. However, it also presents a special problem because angry people tend to avoid trying to help themselves, or seeking help from others. Psychotherapists often talk about three broad categories of unhealthy emotion: anger, fear, and sadness. Individuals who are anxious (fear) or depressed (sad) tend to blame themselves, turn their attention inwards, and, in many cases, that can motivate them to explore self-help or seek therapy. Angry people are different because they are much more likely to blame others, and turn their attention outward.

For that reason, we seldom see individuals in therapy whose main presenting problem is anger. (Of course, we do see clients with issues like depression or PTSD, where anger is a secondary aspect.) For this, and other reasons, the problem of anger has been relatively neglected not only by therapists but by the self-help sector in general. Stoics, such as Epictetus, were clear that the tendency of angry people to blame others, places them in the worst possible position in relation to their own moral and psychological self-improvement.

When then we are hindered or disturbed or grieved, let us never blame others, but ourselves, that is, our opinions. It is the act of an uneducated man to blame others for his own misfortune; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed [in Stoic philosophy], to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose education is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself. — Epictetus, Enchiridion, 5

Since the time of Socrates, nevertheless, self-improvement “experts” have preyed on the vulnerabilities of young men in particular by actually fueling their anger and outrage, and actively encouraging them to blame others for their problems. This problem is especially pronounced today on social media, in the “manosphere”, where a toxic combination of aggressive political rhetoric and pseudoscientific self-improvement advice has flourished.

There are, however, many important works, and remarkable pieces of research on anger. We have excellent cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) protocols for anger. It’s my belief, though, based on my experience training other psychotherapists, that we could significantly improve our approach to tackling anger by combining the best available psychological research with ideas from classical philosophy. We have, of course, an entire book by Seneca on the Stoic psychotherapy of anger, called On Anger, which survives today. Anger is also one of the main themes of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and it is likewise addressed in other important classical texts, such as Plutarch’s On the Control of Anger.

Yet the other passions, even at their height, do in some sort yield and admit reason, when it comes from without to the rescue, into the soul; but temper… shuts out sense completely and locks it out.. — Plutarch

The Stoic position on anger was traditionally contrasted with that of Aristotle and his followers. The Aristotelians believed that moderate anger could be justified and healthy. The Stoics adopted a more radical position, arguing that when anger is understood more in terms of its effect on cognition, or thinking, it’s harder to see how it could ever be truly healthy. Anger, the Stoics claimed, typically conceals a desire for revenge, and the belief that the other person has acted unjustly and therefore deserves to be punished. This reasoning, however, can lead us to underestimate the harm caused, both to ourselves and others, by attempting to “teach this guy a lesson!” by inflicting very severe punishment. As Marcus Aurelius, and other Stoics, put it: our anger often does more harm to us than to those with whom we’re angry.

The Stoic position might appear radical at first but it actually makes the process of therapy and self-improvement much simpler and, I believe, has the potential to make it more effective. Every angry person believes that their anger is righteous and justified, and the more angry they are the more they are convinced they are in the right and everyone else is wrong. So it can be extremely difficult for them to differentiate between healthy and unhealthy anger in practice. The Stoics approach simplifies this by encouraging us to challenge all forms of anger, and look for a more rational, moderate, and healthy alternative. In addition, the Stoics suggest many therapeutic techniques and concepts, which, it seems to me, have the potential to augment existing CBT protocols for anger management.

I’ve actually been working on the problem of anger for many years, to some extent since I first became interested in Stoicism, and began training in psychotherapy, around 25 years ago now. Below you can see a TEDx video that I recorded three years ago, in which I provide a very concise outline of the Stoic approach to anger.

Writing

I’ll be writing more articles about the philosophy and psychology of anger, in addition to my usual output on Stoicism and related topics. I’m working on a proposal for a new book, which will be different from the articles you see me writing, although they’ll be linked to the research I’m currently doing.

Research

I’m looking at the possibility of working with a team of psychologists to carry out some original research on the problem of anger, drawing on elements of CBT and Stoicism, to inform a new approach. I’ll keep you posted about this, but please feel free to get in touch with me if you’re interested in being involved.

Coaching

I published two new books this year. Because I was so busy writing, I had to temporarily suspend my CBT-based coaching practice but I have now resumed doing remote sessions via video call. I’ll be focusing on issues related to anger, as that’s now my main area of research, although in the past I was an anxiety specialist. I’ve worked in many different environments, helping people with different psychological problems, although now I typically offer coaching for everyday problems and mild to moderate (subclinical) emotions and habits. Please feel free to get in touch if you’re interested in coaching sessions.

How You can Help

Please feel free to comment on this post. Share your experiences with anger (your own or that of others), strategies you’ve found helpful in the past, advice you’d offer others, and any questions you might have about the topic. I’d love to know about the biggest challenges you’ve faced with anger, and what you might hope to learn from a book like the one I’m going to be working on.

You can also subscribe to my Substack newsletter, if you haven’t already, in order to stay updated on this project.

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Regards,

Donald Robertson

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Preorder Offer: "How to Think Like Socrates"

How to Think Like Socrates, the follow-up to How to Think Like a Roman Emperor is now available to preorder in hardback, ebook, and audiobook formats. (I’ll be narrating the audiobook myself.) Barnes and Noble are currently offering 25% off all preorders — see below for the special discount code. We also wanted to give you a flavor of the book. So below you can see the table of contents and read an exclusive excerpt about Socrates, Stoicism, and CBT.

A Personal Note

Socrates has always been my favorite philosopher. I enjoy writing about Marcus Aurelius but, for me, the heart of Stoic philosophy comes from Socrates — the “godfather of Stoicism”, as I like to call him. Socrates is a far more complex historical figure, though, so for many years I felt like it would be impossible to write a book about him that followed the same format as the one I’d written about Marcus Aurelius, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor.

I think spending long periods in Athens changed my perspective. I came to see Socrates less as an imposing figure in the history of academic philosophy and more as a living, breathing, human being, who had once walked where I was walking — who lived and died right there in the city centre, or agora. Once I began writing, the book came together quite naturally. I simply created the book about Socrates that I would have wanted to read as a young man — and I enjoyed looking forward to being able to share this with other people.

Nevertheless, in another sense, this was probably the hardest book that I’ve ever written in terms of the quantity of research required, which took me about a year and a half of pretty intense work altogether. (On top of years of research I’d already done for the course I run on Socrates, etc.) At a rough estimate, I’d say about four times more work went into this book than How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. We’re very pleased with how it turned out, and the feedback from academics and other authors, which you can read below, has been overwhelmingly positive.

It’s an introduction to philosophy as a way of life that’s as gripping as any novel, and is as novel as a philosophy book can be. Highly recommended! —Tom Morris

What other Authors Have Said

“One of the best books ever written on the power and practicality of philosophy for a good and successful life! Wisdom isn’t a rulebook but a mindset. It develops from a life of honest and courageous inquiry. Donald J. Robertson masterfully and vividly takes us back to the Athens of Socrates and recreates the setting as well as the powerful ideas that one place, time, and person launched into the world forever. It’s an introduction to philosophy as a way of life that’s as gripping as any novel, and is as novel as a philosophy book can be. Highly recommended!” —Dr. Tom Morris, author of Stoicism for Dummies and Plato’s Lemonade Stand

“Robertson creates a wonderful semi-fictionalized Socrates to introduce modern readers to the birth of philosophy in Athens. We experience first-hand the method Socrates made famous—of subjecting our deepest beliefs to a cross-examination that jolts and stings like an electric ray. In our modern world that swirls with half-truths and disinformation, we need nothing less to awaken us from our illusions.” —Prof. Nancy Sherman, author of Stoic Wisdom: Ancient Lessons for Modern Resilience

"An intriguing and original book, engagingly written and highly accessible. It is innovative both in linking the Socratic dialogues, especially those of Plato, with their historical context and in highlighting the significance of Socratic philosophical enquiry for modern readers. The connection made between Socratic method and CBT psychotherapeutic guidance is particularly suggestive." —Prof. Chris Gill, author of Learning to Live Naturally: Stoic Ethics and its Modern Significance

“A fresh and original introduction to the figure of Socrates, blending philosophy, history, and psychotherapy. Robertson invites readers to take up the Socratic method of self-examination and to embrace a life guided by rational reflection.”—Dr. John Sellars, author of The Pocket Stoic

"Don Robertson is your trusty and insightful guide to the life, times, and thought of the most important philosopher in the western tradition."—Massimo Pigliucci, author of How to Be a Stoic

Table of Contents

The Trial

The First Philosopher

The Female Socrates

The Oracle of Apollo

The Wisest Man Alive

The Lion of Athens

The Peloponnesian War

The Sicilian Expedition

The Fall of Athens

The Thirty Tyrants

The Swan Song

As a young therapist in training, I was astounded… to come across ancient Greek dialogues where Socrates was doing something I can only describe as a precursor of cognitive therapy.

Excerpt

It was from Socrates that Stoicism derived some of its most important ideas. The pioneers of cognitive- behavioral therapy (CBT) frequently quote the famous saying of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus that “people are not upset by events but rather by their opinions about them.” The same idea can be found four centuries before Epictetus, though, in the Socratic dialogues. This basic insight into the nature of emotion leads us to the use of reason as a therapeutic technique, as it implies that we should question the assumptions that cause our distress, if we want to get better.

Many different techniques can be used to change our thoughts and beliefs— our “cognitions,” as psychologists call them. The goal of CBT, put simply, is to replace irrational and unhealthy cognitions with rational and healthy ones. One obvious way of doing that is by asking questions, such as:

Where’s the evidence for that?

What are the consequences of that way of looking at things?

How might other people view that situation differently?

Aaron T. Beck, one of the founders of CBT, said that he initially came across this idea when he was studying Plato’s Republic for a college philosophy course. “Socratic questioning,” of this sort, later became a mainstay of his style of therapy. Countless research studies now show that cognitive therapy techniques of this kind, targeting dysfunctional beliefs, can help people suffering from clinical depression, anxiety disorders, and a host of other emotional problems.

As a young therapist in training, I was astounded, nevertheless, to come across ancient Greek dialogues where Socrates was doing something I can only describe as a precursor of cognitive therapy. He behaved like a relationship counselor or family therapist, at times, by helping his friends, and even his own family members, to resolve their interpersonal conflicts. I wondered why no one had ever told me that Socrates was doing cognitive psychotherapy, of sorts, nearly two and a half thousand years before it was supposedly invented.

On one occasion, for instance, Socrates’s teenage son, Lamprocles, was complaining about his notoriously sharp- tongued mother, the philosopher’s fiery young wife, Xanthippe. Socrates, it seemed to me, questioned his son in an incredibly skillful manner. He managed to get Lamprocles to concede that Xanthippe was actually a good mother, who genuinely cared for him. The boy insisted, however, that he still found her nagging completely intolerable. After some discussion, Socrates asked what struck me as an ingenious therapeutic question: Do actors in tragedies take offense when other characters insult and verbally abuse them? As Socrates remarked, they say things far worse than anything Xanthippe ever did.

Lamprocles thought it was a silly question. Of course they don’t take offense, but that’s because they know that despite appearances the other actors do not, in reality, mean them any harm! It’s just make-believe. That’s correct, replied Socrates, but didn’t you admit just a few moments earlier that you don’t believe your mother really means you any harm either?

I’ll leave you to mull this conversation over. I hope you notice how, with a few simple questions, Socrates helped Lamprocles to examine his anger from a radically different perspective. When assumptions that fuel our anger begin to seem puzzling to us, our thinking can become more flexible, and we may begin to break free from the grip of unhealthy emotions. What once seemed obvious, now seems uncertain. Indeed, the brief dialogue that takes place between them encapsulates one of the recurring themes of Socratic philosophy: How can we distinguish between appearance and reality in our daily lives?

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Claim your Discount

Preorder HOW TO THINK LIKE SOCRATES in any format at Barnes & Noble from 10th — 17th July and get 25% off with code PREORDER25. Note: this discount is only available to B&N members but free memberships are available. 

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What Philosophers Don’t Get About Marcus Aurelius

The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is one of the most widely-read books about philosophy ever written. Its popularity today is somewhat ironic because scholars generally agree that it is unlikely to have been intended for publication. Marcus repeats himself unnecessarily, jumps from one topic to another, alludes to obscure details of his personal life, casually drops in remarks which would have offended his fellow Romans, and rattles off lists of his favourite quotes from other authors, all of which creates the impression that we are reading his private notebooks.

Bust of Marcus Aurelius, reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the British Museum

It’s also odd because despite being one of the most famous surviving books on ancient Greek philosophy, it’s been largely ignored by academic philosophers. When I studied philosophy at Aberdeen University, back in the 1990s, it wasn’t part of the undergraduate curriculum and, as far as I recall, it was never even mentioned. I only really became aware of the Meditations after I graduated. That’s partly because it’s typically viewed today mainly as a self-help classic. Paul Giammati’s character in The Holdovers (2023) is so persuaded of its value as a self-improvement guide that he keeps a stash of copies to give to others as presents: ”For my money,” he enthuses, “it’s like the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita all rolled up into one.”

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The bemusement of academics at this book’s enduring popularity has been recently expressed by Prof. Mary Beard’s in her book, Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient World, which was published in Oct 2023 and immediately became a New York Times bestseller. Beard questions Marcus Aurelius’ “philosophical acumen” as, in her view, the Meditations is nothing more than a collection of trite homilies offering little or nothing of value to today’s readers.

Some modern scholars rank these Jottings as high-quality ethical reflections, deeply informed by the Stoic school of philosophy. Others — and I confess I am one — see them as little more than a collection of philosophical platitudes, one of those books now more often bought than read.

One of Marcus Aurelius’ own biographers, Frank McLynn, also expressed a very negative view of the Stoic philosophy that played such an important role in his life: “A more priggish, inhuman, killjoy and generally repulsive doctrine [than Stoicism] would be hard to imagine,” he sneers. When I came to research my own biography, Marcus Aurelius: The Stoic Emperor, I simply found such a dismissive attitude toward Stoicism untenable.

Such a view of Stoicism is a caricature based on popular misconceptions, and it does the philosophy no justice. Stoicism flourished for five centuries in the ancient world, and numerous proponents spoke to its benefits and appeal. Today thousands of psychological research studies provide scientific evidence for the effectiveness of modern cognitive psychotherapy, which was originally inspired by the Stoics. Many modern readers likewise find in Stoicism a profoundly life-changing philosophy — one which heals certain emotions rather than merely eliminating all of them.

Indeed, the Meditations has been popular in English since the first translation appeared in 1634, it was widely-read in the Victorian era, and in recent decades its popularity has benefited from the resurgence of interest in Stoic philosophy. So what do ordinary people see in it that academic philosophers, and historians such as McLynn and Beard, do not?

One of the main reasons for renewed interest in Marcus Aurelius is that Stoicism was the philosophical inspiration for cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT). Albert Ellis, the main pioneer of CBT in the 1950s, drew heavily on ancient Stoic texts, including the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. By the 1980s, CBT was entering the mainstream. Now, as it is the approach dominating the NHS Talking Therapies, for anxiety and depression (formerly IAPT), it is firmly established as the leading evidence-based form of modern psychotherapy, not only in the UK but internationally. Beard doesn’t mention this. Far from being platitudinous, or even mere “jottings”, I would say the emperor’s reflections on Stoic philosophy are far more consequential than she appears to realise.

“People are not distressed by events but rather by their opinions about them.”

Ellis wrote that some of the core principles of his approach, which later evolved into cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), were not new but “were originally stated several thousand years ago, especially by the Greek and Roman Stoic philosophers”, and he names Marcus Aurelius, among others, as an example of a philosopher who anticipated these aspects of modern psychotherapy. The main insight that Ellis and other cognitive therapists derived from Stoic philosophy was a cognitive model of emotion, which stated that our beliefs shape our emotions to much a greater degree than the majority of us normally assume. It was neatly expressed by Marcus, quoting the Stoic teacher Epictetus, who said that “People are not distressed by events but rather by their opinions about them.” Ellis taught this quote to virtually all of his therapy clients and students, and over time it was so widely quoted in books on CBT that it turned into something of a cliche.

In the 1960s, Aaron T. Beck developed what he called “cognitive therapy”, and acknowledged the same Stoic influences as Ellis, which he credited as providing the “philosophical origins” of his approach. In order to illustrate the cognitive model of emotion, instead of Epictetus, he quotes Marcus Aurelius:

If thou are pained by any external thing, it is not the thing that disturbs thee, but thine own judgement about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgement now. (Marcus Aurelius, quoted in Beck, 1976: 263)

Beck hypothesised that a first crucial step in psychological change consisted in the client noticing how his beliefs were shaping his emotions, before proceeding to challenge them using what he described as a form of “Socratic questioning”. This shift in perspective is so subtle that we don’t have a good term for it in the English language. Beck was forced to adopt the jargon term “cognitive distancing”. He explained that just as someone might wear glasses with red-colored lenses for so long that they begin to believe that the world they’re looking at is actually red, some of our long-standing beliefs can become so fused with external events that we no longer notice their subjective nature. We may be looking at the world through “catastrophe”-colored or “depression”-colored glasses, for instance. Cognitive distancing would be like taking off the coloured lenses and looking at them instead of looking at the world through them. Indeed, Cognitive therapy usually begins by helping the client to “gain distance” by separating their beliefs from reality in this way.

Photo by benjamin lehman on Unsplash

The first wave of cognitive therapists, however, only scratched the surface of this idea’s value. The next generation of clinicians and researchers began to experiment with cognitive distancing and found that it could be therapeutic even when used alone, without the questioning techniques central to Ellis and Beck’s approaches. Philosophers had generally overlooked this aspect of Stoicism because it involves a subtle and unfamiliar shift in perspective with regard to our own thoughts. It was only rediscovered by modern psychologists, and even then it took time before they began to realise its therapeutic importance.

It’s no surprise therefore that academic philosophers, and classicists, reading Marcus Aurelius find it hard to understand why ordinary people who approach the Meditations as a self-help guide find it so beneficial. They lack the conceptual apparatus, or even the terminology, which would be required to articulate what the Stoics were doing. The Stoics, and some of the other Greek philosophers, were, in fact, far ahead of their time with regard to their understanding of psychotherapy. Sigmund Freud, and his followers, for instance, had no idea of the importance of this therapeutic concept, which only gained recognition thanks to the pioneers of cognitive therapy. Some academics may, as Prof. Beard put it, may find the Meditations lacking in “philosophical acumen”, but they have, almost universally, overlooked the psychological acumen of the Stoics.

One of the reasons academics often give for discounting the writings of Stoic philosophers in this way is that they, allegedly, contribute nothing new to philosophy. When I began studying the Stoics I was told that they merely built on concepts and arguments already established by earlier philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. All the Stoics did, it was said, was to apply these philosophical ideas to everyday life — and why on Earth would anyone want to study that? Ironically, though, that’s precisely what the general public find so attractive about Stoicism.

Marcus Aurelius is especially popular because he took some of the most important insights gleaned from ancient philosophy and rephrased them over and over again, in an attempt to find the perfect words to express them. Marcus was, in fact, highly trained in Greek rhetoric and the powerful and concise language he uses in the Meditations renders its wisdom beautiful. He selected key pieces of wisdom from preceding philosophers and brought them to life for himself, and now for us.

The Meditations is little more than a collection of “philosophical platitudes”, in Prof. Beard’s eyes, and she doubts most people who have bought the book actually read it. In my experience, though, people love to read Marcus Aurelius. He is very easy to understand because, frankly, he was one of the greatest aphorists in the history of Western philosophy. The beauty of his writing also has an important psychological effect: it makes the teachings of Stoicism more evocative and more memorable. That’s gold dust in terms of mental health where evidence-based advice can often seem a bit dull. Don’t we gain more from psychological advice, and philosophical wisdom, when it’s expressed very clearly and powerfully? That’s what people find of value in the writings of Marcus Aurelius.

Emotional resilience training, inspired by research on cognitive psychotherapy, aims to reduce the risk of individuals developing conditions such as clinical depression in the future. It works but it seems to require booster sessions because people tend to forget about using the psychological strategies they’ve learned after a year or two. When people get into Stoicism, though, they usually stick with it for a long time, sometimes even for the rest of their lives. It holds real promise, therefore, which shouldn’t be underestimated or discounted. By combining cognitive therapy and the Stoic philosophy that originally inspired it, we may perhaps find ways of helping people to make permanent improvements to their mental health, and acquire lasting emotional resilience. Stoicism, in my view, therefore, is far more than a “collection of philosophical platitudes”. Indeed, it may help us get a few steps closer to achieving what I like to describe as the “Holy Grail” of mental health research.

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When you see someone weeping. . .

When you see someone weeping in sorrow, either because a child has gone on a journey, or because he has lost his property, beware that you be not carried away by the impression that the man is in the midst of external ills, but straightway keep before you this thought: “It is not what has happened that distresses this man (for it does not distress another), but his judgement about it.” Do not, however, hesitate to sympathize with him so far as words go, and, if occasion offers, even to groan with him; but be careful not to groan also in the centre of your being.

Commentary

Don’t be carried away by the impression that the upsetting thing is the external situation, as opposed to the individual’s cognitive response. It’s a classic Stoic formula to ask ourselves “Does this affect others in the same way?” If not then it’s our beliefs that cause the distress rather than the event itself. This sort of question can also be found in the Socratic dialogues of Plato and Xenophon. So it’s likely that Epictetus views himself as following in Socrates’ footsteps with this line of reasoning.

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Review: Right Thing, Right Now by Ryan Holiday

Right Thing, Right Now: Good Values. Good Character. Good Deeds, published in June 2024, is the third book in Ryan Holiday's Stoic Virtues series. The first two books deal with the virtues of courage and discipline, while this one is about justice.

I want to begin at the end, as it were, by highlighting the afterword, in which Holiday discusses his personal journey with Stoicism.  He notes that he was initially drawn to the philosophy because of its psychological benefits, such as developing self-discipline and emotional resilience. 

“Like most people, when I was first drawn to Stoicism, I was attracted to what it could do for me. I was looking for stuff I could use. My Stoicism was largely a stern one, about treating the body rigorously, as Seneca said. Getting up early. Running. Fulfilling your potential. Conquering your emotions. Discipline. Fortitude. Grit.”

This, he says, was a more self-centered version of Stoicism, where the priority is to maintain your own equanimity by ignoring things that you believe are none of your business. Over time, he says, the "deeper message” of the Stoics sunk in, and changed him. He came to care much more about the social aspects of the philosophy, and its emphasis upon social responsibility and the common welfare of mankind.

“The reason I walked away from marketing instead of becoming an edgelord is because Stoicism had given me the clarity to realize that that was not who I was meant to be. That was not a good direction to take one’s life, no matter how rich or powerful it might make you.”

In short, Holiday describes how Stoicism led him on a journey of personal transformation. He says he became a better person through his study of it and by trying to follow its teachings in daily life. Stoicism opened his eyes, in particular, to the importance of doing things that make the world a better place, if we want to live a truly meaningful and fulfilled life.

Holiday is right that if you read Marcus Aurelius enough times, you should notice how frequently he refers to the common good. (More than eighty times, by his count.) It’s baffling that people can read Meditations, claim it’s one of their favorite books, and yet seem oblivious to one of the most prominent themes. On more or less every page, Marcus refers to justice, kindness, natural affection, the brotherhood of humankind, cosmopolitanism, and other concepts related to social virtue.

Yet some people still claim to find in Marcus Aurelius a self-centered and hard-hearted version of “Stoicism” that encourages indifference toward the rest of humanity. That’s the opposite of what I think he, and indeed the other Stoics, actually meant. In reality, many of the famous Stoics were very active in politics, and some famously risked, and even lost, their lives standing up against despots — look up the “Stoic Opposition” for some examples. When I come across Stoicism being interpreted as a philosophy of moral indifference, therefore, it reminds me of William Blake’s saying: “Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read'st black where I read white.”

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The sort of people who like to think of Stoicism as a form of hard-hearted individualism are probably going to be surprised that Holiday has written a book about justice. If they do acknowledge that justice is a virtue, in my experience, they often tend to think of it as somehow divorced from qualities such as compassion and kindness. Perhaps that’s because most people today think of “justice” primarily as a sort of principle of fairness, of the kind supposed to be enforced by the law.

Ancient philosophers, such as the Stoics, speak of dikaiosune, which is traditionally referred to in English as the cardinal virtue of “Justice”—but it’s not a very good translation. In the past, the word “righteousness” was sometimes used instead because dikaiosune implies doing what is morally right, as well as what is fair or just. Crucially, it encompasses acting with the virtue of kindness, something that’s too often lost in translation. Holiday, though, is aware that we’re talking about social virtue, or morality, in a broader sense. He has therefore filled this book with examples of individuals he views as exemplifying the virtue of justice in action, through their moral integrity and fairness in dealing with others, but also their humanity, compassion, and kindness.

Right Thing, Right Now opens with the famous allegory known as The Choice of Hercules—in a section preceding the introduction. In Xenophon’s Memorabilia of Socrates. It’s the story of a young man who finds himself at a fork in the road, at which he must make a profound decision, choosing between the path of virtue and the path of vice—an existential choice that will shape his character for the rest of his life.

Hercules, of course, chose virtue, although it meant enduring great hardship, in the form of the “Twelve Labors.” Holiday presumably has experiences from his own life in mind when he cites this allegory, but he is sharing it with us because it relates to an almost universal human experience. To some extent, we are all confronted with moral decisions that shape our lives. This decision can be made somewhat easier if we have good role models, such as friends or family members, whom we trust and admire, and whose examples we’re confident that we can follow. It becomes a major crisis, though, if there’s nobody we can turn to for direction.

Since the early days of Stoicism, people have been attracted to the philosophy because they believed it offered a remedy for troubling emotions, such as anxiety and depression, and a method of building greater emotional resilience in the future. Spinoza expressed this uncertainty and craving for happiness very dramatically in an unfinished manuscript when he describes how bouts of “extreme melancholy” drove him, as a young man, on a quest to procure a philosophical balm for his troubled mind:

“I thus perceived that I was in a state of great peril, and I compelled myself to seek with all my strength for a remedy, however uncertain it might be; as a sick man struggling with a deadly disease, when he sees that death will surely be upon him […] is compelled to seek such a remedy with all his strength, inasmuch as his whole hope lies therein.” — De Intellectus Emendatione, 4-5

In one of his private letters, Marcus Aurelius, in his mid-twenties, seems to describe going through a similar crisis. Fortunately, though, Marcus could turn to the two men that he most admired: his adoptive father, the emperor Antoninus Pius; and his Stoic mentor, Junius Rusticus.

Holiday observes, however, as many people have, that a growing number of angry and discontented young men, lost souls, as it were, seem to be looking for self-improvement online because they have no one to whom they can turn. For some reason, they’re no longer getting what they need from their parents or teachers. Ironically, Stoicism often appeals to them not because it advocates social virtue and commitment to the common welfare of mankind, but rather because they associate it with a sort of hard-hearted individualism and emotional toughness.

“We have a generation of lost young men. Women are thriving in school, in higher education, and in the workplace in encouraging and inspiring ways. Men in America and in many other countries, the statistics show, seem to be in a kind of doom loop. They’re struggling. They’re angry. They’re angry that on top of their own struggles, they’re supposed to care about other people who are struggling for different reasons. That they have to consider other people’s disadvantages, other injustices than the ones they’re dealing with.”

The causal relationship here is obviously circular: our personal suffering makes us angry, our anger alienates us from other people, and this alienation merely causes us even more suffering.

By contrast, one of the fundamental goals of Stoicism is to achieve a sense of harmony, or unity, within ourselves and with the world around us, but also with the rest of humanity. That’s the foundation of the Stoic cardinal virtues. Marcus Aurelius, for instance, constantly warns himself about allowing himself to feel inherently separate or alienated from the rest of mankind. These young men, though, feel absolutely alienated from others. Their obvious discontentment is like blood in the water, attracting online sharks, in the form of particularly cynical self-improvement influencers who seek to exploit this very weakness for their own ends.

“It shouldn’t surprise us that demagogues and grifters would step into this void, playing off these insecurities, offering (mis) guidance as well as grievances. They’ve taken the tenets of Stoic philosophy, perverted it, mixed it with equal parts toxic masculinity and ressentiment [...]. This is clearly good business, as some of the massive online audiences of certain controversial figures indicate. They are speaking to people who were ignored and feel mistreated, and perhaps it was inevitable that someone would step in to meet this demand. All I know is that I won’t be one of those people.”

A lot of young men, perhaps inevitably, feel most insecure about their masculinity. That’s the point at which their sense of self is weakest and most vulnerable. Today, they often complain that they’re receiving mixed messages from society, which confuses them even more about the values and goals that they’re “supposed” to have. Real men, they’re told, get married and have kids, or maybe they’re players who go around having sex with as many women as they please. Real men are also supposedly tough-minded and even aggressive in defending their interests. Anger, not kindness, often seems like a virtue to vulnerable young men because they’re led, by influencers in the so-called “manosphere”, to associate it with power. Just scroll through the rabid comments, though, on YouTube videos published by some of the most prominent influencers appealing to this demographic. Ask yourself: are the young men consuming this content becoming less angry or more angry as a result? You don’t need to be a psychologist to realize that it’s doing them more harm than good — that much is pretty obvious to most impartial observers.

These contradictory values create an obvious problem for young men: anger, as research consistently shows, tends to be associated with social isolation. Their “masculine” role models often seem to be encouraging, and even modeling, precisely the antisocial qualities that lead to deeper alienation. These attitudes prevent lasting and fulfilling relationships from being formed with anyone, especially members of the opposite sex. As is often the case when people find themselves in a state of desperation, the “solution” they keep reaching for often just makes their problem even worse.

“A branch cut off from the adjacent branch must of necessity be cut off from the whole tree also. So too a man when he is separated from another man has fallen off from the whole social community. Now as to a branch, another cuts it off but a man by his own act separates himself from his neighbor when he hates him and turns away from him and he does not know that he has at the same time cut himself off from the whole social system. Yet he has this privilege certainly from Zeus, who framed society, for it is in our power to grow again to that which is near to us, and again to become a part which helps to make up the whole. However, if it often happens, this kind of separation, it makes it difficult for that which detaches itself to be brought to unity and to be restored to its former condition. Finally, the branch, which from the first grew together with the tree, and has continued to have one life with it, is not like that which after being cut off is then ingrafted, for this is something like what the gardeners mean when they say that it grows with the rest of the tree, but that it has not the same mind with it.” – Meditations, 11.8

Anger, in other words, divides us not only from the person with whom we’re angry but from the whole of mankind. That’s because anger isn’t just an attitude, it’s a whole state of mind, and perhaps even becomes a way of life for some people. Whether you’re outraged by “cultural Marxists,” “radical feminists,” “MAGA lunatics,” vegans, drag queens, or some other group of bogeymen or scapegoats, you place yourself in a condition of “temporary madness” that will inevitably come to infect your relationships with everyone else. One minute you’re yelling at the television, the next you find yourself snapping angrily, for no reason, at your best friend. (Your girlfriend has already left you!) Anger corrodes the very fabric of society in this way.

When the more inward-looking emotions, such as anxiety and depression, dominate, they typically manifests as worry, guilt, and self-recrimination over our inability to secure for ourselves the things we desire. (That’s because externals are never entirely under our control.) For the angry young men who proliferate on the Internet, however, it takes a different form. Anger is an externalizing emotion. The angry typically blame other people, both individually and collectively, for their problems. As such, it’s the emotion perhaps furthest removed from a state of mind in which we take genuine ownership and moral responsibility for our lives. That makes it even more remarkable when some of those claiming to be experts on self-improvement appear to do everything in their power to stir up outrage among their followers, and to fuel their hatred and anger toward others.

What the Stoics meant by “justice” (dikaiosune) encompassed the virtues of both fairness and kindness. Kindness is the polar opposite of anger. In anger, we desire to get revenge on others by harming them. In kindness, we seek to help them progress toward wisdom and virtue. Anger is also contrary to fairness because when we are angry we lack empathy and understanding, and do not treat others as we would wish to be treated by them, if the tables were turned. The angrier someone becomes, the more they tend to believe their anger is justified and righteous. As anger grows among us, justice truly withers and dies. Holiday’s book encourages its readers to think more deeply about the true meaning of justice, and what it looks like in real life. The Stoics believed that our own anger does us even more harm than the people with whom we’re angry. Likewise, true acts of kindness potentially do us even more good than they do the people to whom we’re being kind.

Holiday opens this book by saying that “The clearest evidence that justice is the most important of all the virtues” comes from the fact that the other virtues seem worthless, or even downright bad, without it. I agree, and it seemed to me, therefore, that this came across, in a sense, as being the most important of his series of books on the cardinal virtues. Wisdom without justice seems self-centered; courage without justice sounds like the boldness of a criminal; self-discipline without justice likewise sounds like it could be the mark of someone cruel and dangerous. We could perhaps go further and wonder whether some individuals who believe they are engaged in self-improvement but who ignore or oppose social virtue may inadvertently end up training themselves in vice. As we’ve seen, there are definitely well-known self-improvement influencers, with huge numbers of followers, who encourage misogyny and other qualities that many impartial observers consider the opposite of virtue.

Fortunately, there is much that can be done to help those who feel lost and are sincerely looking for ways to better themselves. Holiday mentions the Golden Rule in his introduction. This really does offer an important ethical guideline. It helps address the common complaint that philosophy is too complicated or ambiguous to offer any answers that might be of practical value.

“That’s the golden rule, right? Treat others how you would want to be treated. And who wants to be treated any way other than kindly? With respect? With fairness? It’s not just a rule, it’s a way of living. The Stoics said we should try to see every person we meet as an opportunity for kindness. This is a wonderful change in perspective. It transforms daily life, as challenging and noxious as it can be, into a series of chances, one after another, to be nice, to do something nice, to be considerate, to make a positive difference.”

The Golden Rule might not be comprehensive, but it’s easy to understand, and countless people have found it valuable over the centuries. If you’re confused about the difference between right and wrong, at the very least you can probably start with the observation that almost everyone hates moral hypocrisy. Justice must be fair, and it cannot be fair if it is based on a double standard. The Golden Rule therefore provides a useful heuristic method for applied ethics—it represents a sort of moral baseline. You’ll find, I believe, that the most cynical and exploitative influencers in the self-improvement field don’t even pass the smell test in this regard.

Right Thing, Right Now contains many anecdotes from a wide variety of historical figures, from Harry S. Truman to Florence Nightingale and Mahatma Gandhi. Holiday refers to either Stoic philosophy or Marcus Aurelius nearly a hundred times by my count, explicitly maintaining the Stoic theme of the series, although Stoicism is implicit throughout. Like his previous books, it’s a joy to read. It’s not a theoretical treatise on Stoic philosophy but a moral exhortation, by means of exemplary biography, in the tradition of Plutarch’s Lives. For that reason, it’s likely to reach, and benefit, a much wider audience than a dry academic work on Stoicism.

Right Thing, Right Now gives its readers numerous examples to contemplate and potentially emulate. If there’s one abiding impression in particular worth taking from it, however, I think that would have to be the realization that justice is something we all have a responsibility to pursue, both for the sake of others and for our own sake. Ultimately, what I do to others, I do to myself. If I wish only to help them rather than harm them, I will help myself in the process, and that is what I call the royal road to self-improvement.

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Book Summary: How to Think Like a Roman Emperor

How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius (2019) has been read (or listened to) by over a quarter of a million people since it was published, in twenty different languages. This is a brief summary of the contents.

Introduction

The introduction explains how I came to write the book, drawing on my background in academic philosophy and training as a cognitive-behavioural psychotherapist, after nearly twenty years of writing and teaching Stoicism. It discusses the modern growth of interest in Stoicism, including the activities of the Modern Stoicism organization. It also explains how the idea for the book came from my experience of telling my young daughter, Poppy, stories about ancient philosophy.

1. The Dead Emperor

The first chapter opens with the death of Marcus Aurelius. I wanted to start the book with something dramatic. Each chapter begins with a story about some major event in Marcus’ life, based on the information we have from the various Roman histories of his reign.

In most of the chapters that leads into a discussion of Stoic philosophy and psychology and the concepts and techniques he used to cope with various problems such as anger, anxiety, pain, and so on. Then there’s a detailed discussion of how Stoic techniques can actually be applied today, drawing on my experience as a cognitive-behavioural therapist and the relevant scientific research. However, the first chapter is slightly different because after describing the events surrounding Marcus’ death in some detail, it proceeds to give the reader a short introduction to Stoic philosophy.

The story of Stoicism begins with Zeno of Citium, the founder of the school, and so you’ll be introduced to various anecdotes about him and other famous Stoics. Then we focus on what the Stoics actually believed: the core doctrines of the philosophy followed by Marcus throughout his entire adult life. And we’ll address some common misconceptions about Stoicism, such as the idea that Stoics were unemotional or joyless, which is false. I tried to keep the explanation of Stoicism in this chapter as simple as possible but after reading it you should have a pretty clear idea of who the Stoics were and what they believed. Then you’ll be well prepared to begin delving into the application of Stoicism to different areas of life. For example, in the next chapter we’ll be looking at how Stoics used language and in subsequent chapters you’ll learn how they overcame unhealthy desires and bad habits, conquered anxiety, managed anger, coped with pain and illness, came to terms with loss, and even faced their own mortality.

2. The Most Truthful Child in Rome

This chapter tells the story of Marcus’ youth and his studies in rhetoric and philosophy. He gradually shifted his attention away from the typical education offered by Sophists, and expected of a Roman noble. Instead he began pursuing the more demanding training offered by Stoic philosophers. We focus on Marcus’ Stoic teacher Apollonius of Chalcedon and explain some of the basic principles of Stoic psychology in this chapter.

There’s a common misconception that Stoics are unemotional so we correct that by explaining that the Stoics believed we should accept certain involuntary emotional reactions as natural and inevitable, rather than trying to suppress them. And they also actively encouraged certain healthy or positive emotions, which conformed to reason. The Stoic concept of emotion is illustrated with a remarkable anecdote about a Stoic teacher who was caught in a dangerous storm while sailing from Greece to Italy.

We look in detail at how the Stoics trained themselves to use language objectively avoiding strong value judgements and emotive rhetoric that might cause unnecessary distress. One of the basic psychological principles of Stoicism is that it’s not events that upset us but our judgements about them. So we explore specific ways in which we can learn to suspend distressing value judgements and view things more calmly and rationally, in a detached manner. We’ll look at how these psychological strategies were practised by the ancient Stoics and compare them to concepts and techniques used in modern cognitive psychotherapy.

3. Contemplating the Sage

This chapter focuses on Marcus’ relationship with his close friend and Stoic mentor, Junius Rusticus. Marcus says that Rusticus made him aware that he could benefit from Stoic psychological therapy or therapeia. The ancient Stoics actually wrote books on psychological therapy. Although they’re now lost, we do have a book by Galen, Marcus’ famous court physician, called On the Diagnosis and Cure of the Soul’s Passions, which draws inspiration from the Therapeutics of Chrysippus, the third head of the Stoic school.

Galen describes a process of moral correction and psychological therapy which may have resembled the sort of Stoic philosophical therapy that Marcus experienced as a youth, under the guidance of Junius Rusticus. This chapter tries to reconstruct that therapeutic approach by comparing Galen’s account with some remarks made by Marcus in The Meditations. It focuses on the way in which Stoics identified role models, such as Junius Rusticus, and how they learned to emulate their behaviour and assimilate the character traits they most admired in their heroes.

We also relate this to the advice found in The Golden Verses of Pythagoras, mentioned by Galen but also by Seneca and Epictetus. There we’re told to review our actions three times at the end of each day and ask ourselves three questions: What we did badly, What we did well, and what we omitted that could be done better in the future.

Donald in the Roman city of Carnuntum, where Marcus Aurelius wrote The Meditations4. The Choice of Hercules

This chapter tells the story of Marcus’ adoptive brother and co-emperor, Lucius Verus. The two boys grew up together in the household of the Emperor Antoninus Pius and they both studied Stoic philosophy but over time their characters developed in quite different ways. Lucius abandoned philosophy and became known as a drunk and a poor leader. Marcus strove for excellence and continued to develop his character throughout his life by training himself rigorously in Stoic philosophy as a way of life.

We compare their paths in life to a famous allegory called The Choice of Hercules originating with the Sophist Prodicus, which was retold by Socrates, and inspired Zeno the founder of Stoicism to become a philosopher. This simple allegory was contained in a powerful speech designed to inspire young men to embrace virtue, and study philosophy, rather than giving in to easy living and vice. We also relate this to one of Aesop’s fables, which Marcus alludes to in The Meditations, about the town mouse and the country mouse. (Lucius reminds me of the town mouse and Marcus of the country mouse.)

The rest of the chapter is about how to develop awareness of our desires, evaluate them, and change bad habits where necessary, by combining ancient Stoic therapeutic strategies with concepts and techniques from modern cognitive-behavioural therapy. We do that in part by training ourselves to become more aware of the earliest signs of a desire or habit and also by carefully picturing the consequences to ourselves. That allows us to contrast the outcome if we indulge in the habit with the outcome if we exercise self-discipline and reason.

I also talk about the positive role of emotion in Stoicism and three different areas of life in which Marcus says Stoics can experience healthy feelings of joy and happiness.

5. Grasping the Nettle

This chapter begins with the story of Marcus’ chronic health problems. In the nineteenth century a cache of letters between Marcus and his rhetoric teacher Fronto was discovered and this give us glimpses of his personal life, including some complaints about health issues from both parties. These letters contrast sharply with Marcus’ later attitude toward coping with pain, as demonstrated in The Meditations. There he also happens to quote a letter by Epicurus that talks about avoiding complaints and responding wisely when suffering from an illness. It’s fascinating to compare this letter of Epicurus with the letters Marcus received from Fronto, which exhibit a much less resilient attitude toward pain.

The point I wanted to make is that Marcus’ rhetoric teacher was perhaps bound to be more expressive in complaining about his condition. Over time, though, as Marcus progressed in his studies of Stoicism he learned to adopt a much more philosophical attitude toward his own experience of physical pain and suffering.

Marcus doesn’t provide a neat list of Stoic strategies for coping with pain but by closely reviewing the text of The Meditations we can identify roughly seven different methods he employed. This chapter explores those in detail and discusses how they can be applied by us today, in a way that’s more informed by modern research on psychological coping skills.

The Stoics were also influenced by the Cynic concept of “voluntary hardship” and learning to endure pain, through repeated exposure to coping with discomfort. We explore that idea and some very striking metaphors the Cynics used to explain their concept of radical acceptance of unpleasant sensations. For instance, they said that if we try to grab a snake by the tail we’re likely to get bitten but the person who has the courage to seize it behind its head will actually be safer. These ideas about facing discomfort and radically accepting it, in order to cope better, are very similar to strategies used in modern-day mindfulness and acceptance based psychotherapy. So although they seem paradoxical at first, we have evidence that they can be very effective.

6. The Inner Citadel and War of Many Nations

This chapter opens with the story of an exceptionally dramatic battle described by the Roman historian Cassius Dio, apparently a turning point in the war on the northern frontier. He explains that Marcus’ legionaries actually clashed with the Sarmatian cavalry on the frozen surface of the River Danube, fighting them on the ice. I once heard that this scene was considered for inclusion in the Russell Crowe movie Gladiator, which features Richard Harris as Marcus Aurelius. It wasn’t used in the end but it seems the ice battle scene was later recycled for a movie set in Roman Britain called King Arthur.

We explore Stoic techniques that help reduce anxiety, beginning with the so-called “reserve clause”, a mental strategy that involved adding a caveat like “Fate permitting” to every intended action. That leads naturally into the famous Stoic technique called premeditation of adversity, through which Marcus and other Stoics would mentally rehearse potential misfortunes each day in order to rehearse viewing them with philosophical indifference.

This chapter reviews seven different ways in which psychological techniques like premeditation can bring about beneficial psychological changes and help us overcome anxiety. We know that there are many different processes that mental imagery can potentially activate in our minds, for therapeutic change. We also compare Marcus’ life on the northern frontier to his memories of pleasant holidays in his family villas in Italy. He refers several times to the notion that the peacefulness of these idyllic retreats can be recaptured wherever he is, even in the mud and chaos of battle, if he knows how to detach his mind from externals, like the Stoics taught him.

This chapter reviews the connection between Stoic techniques described by Marcus and others and similar methods found in modern evidence-based psychotherapy, such as cognitive distancing, worry postponement and decatastrophizing. We know a lot more about how these techniques work now so with that research at our disposal we can be more specific about the best way to actually apply Stoic practices in modern life, in order to deal with worry and anxiety.

7. Temporary Madness

This chapter begins with the dramatic story of the civil war between Marcus Aurelius and one of his own generals, called Avidius Cassius. Although Marcus was almost universally remembered by Romans as an exceptionally wise and benevolent emperor, he clearly had some enemies. In The Meditations he mentions being surrounded by those who don’t share his values and would rather see him dead. There are other hints of conflict as well but the historical fact of the civil war provides conclusive evidence that Marcus faced political opposition from other powerful Romans during his reign. Marcus and Avidius Cassius were very contrasting characters. I think it’s fair to say that Marcus was more of a military dove and Cassius more of a hawk. Cassius seems to have thought Marcus was too weak and not aggressive enough against Rome’s enemies.

Perhaps the most striking thing about this incident is the speech that Cassius Dio says Marcus delivered to his gathered troops as they were preparing to march southeast and face the usurper’s rebel army in battle. Astoundingly, Marcus is shown pardoning everyone involved in the uprising against him. If that’s true it would undoubtedly have shocked his troops and was clearly a reflection of his Stoic principles regarding forgiveness and the folly of seeking revenge. Ironically, with a pardon on the table, and facing a superior army, the legions of Avidius Cassius lost their desire to fight. He was assassinated by his own officers bringing the civil war to an end only a few months after it had started. Marcus earned the trust of the men under his command through his wisdom and compassion. Cassius forced his will on others through violence, and his men were afraid of him but apparently not very loyal.

In this chapter we therefore explore the Stoic approach to empathy and forgiveness and look at how these provide remedies for anger. We know Marcus struggled with his own temper at first because he says so in The Meditations. He actually provides a neat list of ten therapeutic strategies for managing anger, which he calls ten “gifts from Apollo”, the god of healing. We go through this in detail in this chapter and compare them to similar methods used for anger management in modern cognitive-behavioural therapy.

The chapter concludes by returning to the story and the aftermath of the civil war. Marcus stood by his word and not only forgave most of those involved in the civil war but actually protected the family of Avidius Cassius from persecution. However, after Marcus’ death, his son Commodus, who was no philosopher and somewhat less forgiving, had them hunted down and burned alive as traitors.

Marcus Aurelius in his youth, prime, and old age.8. Death and the View from Above

[This is an excerpt from the final chapter.]

Vindobona, March 17, 180 AD. The emperor beckons his guard to come close and whispers: Go to the rising sun, for I am already setting. He barely has enough strength to pronounce these words. Marcus glimpses fear in the young officer’s eyes. The guard hesitates for a moment before nodding awkwardly and returning to his post at the entrance to the imperial quarters. Marcus pulls the sheet above his head and rolls over uncomfortably, as if to go to sleep for the last time. He can feel death beckoning him on all sides. How easy it would be to slip into oblivion and be free from the pain and discomfort once and for all. The pestilence is devouring his frail old body from within.

He hasn’t eaten for days, weakening himself by fasting. Now, as the sun goes down outside everything is very quiet. His eyelids flutter, although the pain keeps him awake. The emperor slips in and out of consciousness. But he doesn’t die.

He thinks to himself, “Your eyes feel so heavy now — it’s time to let them close.” The sweet sensation of consciousness dissolving begins to creep over him . . .

I must have fallen asleep, or lost consciousness again. I can’t tell if my eyes are open or closed. Everything is dark. Soon it will be daybreak outside and the sparrows will sing their morning song. Spring has broken and the streams have thawed. Their waters flow into the mighty river passing by the camp outside.

The soldiers picture the spirit of the Danube as an ancient river god. He silently offers us all a lesson if only we pause to listen: all things change, and before long they are gone. You cannot step into the same river twice, Heraclitus once said, because new waters are constantly flowing through it. Nature herself is a rushing torrent, just like the Danube, sweeping along all things in her stream. No sooner has something come into existence than the great river of time washes it away again, only to carry something else into view. The long-forgotten past lies upstream from me now, and downstream waits the immeasurable darkness of the future, vanishing from sight.

I won’t be needing my medicines or physicians again. I’m relieved the fuss is over. The time has come to let the river wash me away too. Change is both life and death. We can try to stall the inevitable, but we never escape it. It’s a fool’s game,

With meats and drinks and magic spells To turn aside the stream and hold death at bay.

Looking back, it seems more obvious to me now than ever before that the lives of most men are tragedies of their own making. Men let themselves either get puffed up with pride or tormented by grievances. Everything they concern themselves with is fragile, trivial, and fleeting. We’re left with nowhere to stand firm. Amidst the torrent of things rushing past, there’s nothing secure in which we can invest our hopes.

You may as well lose your heart to one of the little sparrows who nest by the riverbank — that’s what I used to say. As soon as it’s charmed you, it will flit away, vanishing from sight. I once set my heart on my own little sparrows. I called them my chicks in their nest: thirteen boys and girls, given to me by Faustina. Now only Commodus and four of the girls are left, wearing grave faces and weeping for me. The rest were taken before their time, long ago now. At first I grieved terribly, but the Stoics taught me how to both love my children and endure when Nature reclaimed them. When I was mourning my little twin boys, Apollonius patiently consoled me and helped me slowly regain my composure. It’s natural to mourn — even some animals grieve the loss of their young. But there are those who go beyond the natural bounds of grief and let themselves be swept away entirely by melancholy thoughts and passions. The wise man accepts his pain, endures it, but does not add to it.

Introducing "The Stoicism Workbook"

This excerpt is my introduction to The Stoicism Workbook: How the Wisdom of Socrates Can Help You Build Resilience and Overcome Anything Life Throws at You by Scott Waltman, R. Trent Codd, and, my wife, Kasey Pierce. The book is now available to preorder from Amazon and other bookstores in both ebook and paperback format.

Preorder from Amazon

The Stoicism Workbook

Less than twenty years ago, Stoicism was little more than an obscure niche subject in academic philosophy.  Although millions of people owned books by famous Stoics such as Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, nobody thought of Stoicism as a movement within the modern self-improvement field.  That changed quite rapidly, as the emergence of social media allowed people all over the world who had read the Stoics to form online communities.  In 2008, William B. Irvine published A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy, the first bestselling modern book on Stoicism.  A few years later, Ryan Holiday The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph, became a huge international bestseller, which confirmed Stoicism as a genre of modern self-help.  Now it’s difficult to keep track of the new books and articles being published on Stoicism every year.  

Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The foundations of this Stoic renaissance were laid much earlier, though, in the 1950s, by Albert Ellis, one of the leading pioneers of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT),  Ellis, having become thoroughly disillusioned with the psychoanalytic therapy in which he had trained, decided to start again from scratch.  He began developing what, at that time, he called simply “rational therapy” but later became known as rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT).  Ellis had read widely in the field of psychotherapy but also in related subjects, particularly philosophy.  Ellis recalled having first encountered the writings of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus as a young man.  As he began looking for an alternative to the psychoanalytic tradition, they suddenly appeared more relevant to him than ever before.  Ellis was happy to credit the Stoics with anticipating his key ideas: “Many of the principles incorporated in the theory of rational-emotive psychotherapy are not new; some of them, in fact, were originally stated several thousand years ago, especially by the Greek and Roman Stoic philosophers,” and he names Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius in particular as his influences in this regard (Ellis, 1962, p. 35).  (Ellis appears to have been less interested in Seneca, the other famous Stoic whose works survive today.)   

The famous quote from Epictetus used by both Ellis and Beck to explain the role of cognition in their theory of emotion, and psychopathology, became almost a cliche among therapists…

Indeed, Stoicism became one of the main philosophical inspirations for the new approach to psychotherapy that Ellis was developing. When Aaron T. Beck published his seminal Cognitive Therapy and the Emotional Disorders likewise he stated that “the philosophical underpinnings [of cognitive therapy] go back thousands of years, certainly to the time of the Stoics, who considered man’s conceptions (or misconceptions) of events rather than the events themselves as the key to his emotional upsets. (Beck A. T., 1976, p. 3).  In particular, the famous quote from Epictetus used by both Ellis and Beck to explain the role of cognition in their theory of emotion, and psychopathology, became almost a cliche among therapists: “People are disturbed not by events, but by their opinions about events.”  This quote is found in countless subsequent books on CBT.  It is, however, the only reference to Stoicism mentioned by most of them.  That subsequent neglect of Stoicism is surprising for several reasons.  

Ellis, the original pioneer of cognitive-behavioral therapy, refers to Stoicism many times throughout his writings, drawing on different passages from Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, and he employs many other concepts and practices that appear indebted to Stoicism.

As Stoicism and CBT share virtually the same premise about the role of cognition in emotional problems, they’re likely to arrive at similar conclusions about the best solutions, and we should therefore expect that Stoic contemplative practices might be worth investigating in order to gain new ideas for therapy strategies and techniques.

As Stoicism is not merely a therapy but a whole philosophy of life, it potentially offers a framework for developing CBT into a lifelong practice with a broad scope, for self-improvement and developing general emotional resilience.

Many individuals who are not attracted to conventional self-help or therapy literature are nevertheless drawn to Stoicism, and it may therefore provide their only exposure to beneficial psychological advice similar to that found in CBT.  For instance, Stoicism is popular with prison inmates and military personnel, who sometimes (mistakenly) view using self-help or psychotherapy as a sign of weakness and therefore to be avoided. 

With the development of a “third wave” in CBT, consisting of “mindfulness and acceptance” based approaches, emphasis has shifted on to strategies such as developing cognitive mindfulness and clarifying personal values, which bear a striking resemblance to prominent aspects of ancient Stoicism.

The Stoicism Workbook is written by two experienced CBT clinicians, and one layperson who has been applying Stoicism to everyday problems of living.  I hope that it will help its readers to discover the many ways in which Stoic philosophy and cognitive psychotherapy might complement each other.  In particular, by incorporating recent “third wave” ideas from CBT they help to expand the range of comparisons between Stoicism and modern psychotherapy.  Moreover, by drawing attention to the value of Stoicism, and Socratic questioning, for building emotional resilience, they help to bridge the divide between clinical practice and general self-improvement, making the combination of Stoicism and CBT relevant and applicable to a much wider audience.  

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Was Marcus Aurelius Cuckolded?

I’ve been asked several times to comment on this Reddit post about Marcus Aurelius. As the answer isn’t simple, I’ll go into it in a bit more detail in this analysis below.

My initial reaction to this was: who cares? Or rather, I think the ancient Stoics would have advised us to view the feelings experienced by the author of this post as an unhealthy passion or irrational fear. Stoic philosophy would encourage us to question the assumptions on which this fear is based. Why, for instance, should more importance be placed on the alleged actions of Marcus Aurelius’ wife than upon his philosophy?

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As the author of a recent biography of Marcus Aurelius, though, I’d like to comment on the historical claims. As is often the case, what we’re reading here is, I think, a slightly distorted version of the truth. Let me begin by explaining the historical source to which, I assume, the author of the post must be referring. The only source that makes this claim is the Historia Augusta, which was written perhaps two centuries after the death of Marcus Aurelius.

The Historia Augusta is generally considered to be a highly problematic source. It contains a considerable amount of material drawn from earlier Roman histories, alongside very dubious additions and embellishments. On one hand, its chapter about Marcus Aurelius is considered among the better sections, on the other, the letters and gossip, etc, are considered some of its worst material. Most scholars, moreover, believe that the section of the chapter in which this anecdote occurs appears to consist in the awkward interpolation of text from another, presumably earlier but otherwise unknown, source.

The author of the Historia Augusta makes it clear from the outset that this particular story is being presented as hearsay. He even goes out of his way to warn the reader that this anecdote has been embellished by popular gossip.

Some say, and it seems plausible, that Commodus Antoninus, his son and successor, was not begotten by him, but in adultery; they embroider this assertion, moreover, with a story current among the people. — italics added

Of course, it might still be true. Then again, it might not. We’re not dealing, for instance, with an event happening in public, such as a war, that has been witnessed by many people. Rather, we’re being told about something that allegedly happened in private, without knowing who, if anyone, supposedly leaked the information.

This sort of material should, therefore, be treated with caution, especially as it’s not reported by other Roman historians, and only appears in the dubious Historia Augusta. When we’re dealing with ancient history, incidentally, it’s useful to imagine drawing two columns and placing in one hearsay, or events that are being reported based on rumor, and in the other events that actually occurred in public view or are being reported based on an identifiable source, such as a credible witness. Let’s try to apply this sort of distinction to the claims about Marcus’ wife…

Before we go further into the story, we can already respond, I think, to the sensational claim that Marcus was not Commodus’ real father. How would anyone except Marcus and Faustina know this? For what it’s worth, the surviving statues of Marcus and Commodus, of which there are many, show them to be strikingly similar in physical appearance. It would therefore be rather surprising if Commodus, who happens to look so much like his father, was not Marcus’ real son.

Marcus or Commodus?

When we’re dealing with hearsay, we should ask what the potential motive could be for spreading false information. In this case, the answer appears obvious. Most of the rumors about Marcus relate to his wife’s fidelity and the legitimacy of his son. These clearly served to cast doubt on Commodus’ claim to the throne. Rival contenders to the throne, of course, would have circulated rumors such as these in order to place Commodus’ right to rule in question. The main candidate being, without question, Avidius Cassius, who actually instigated a civil war against Marcus and Commodus, in order to lay claim to the empire. Cassius’ supporters would, almost certainly, have cast doubt on the paternity of Commodus and the decision to name him as Marcus Aurelius’ successor. The Historia Augusta uses this rumor, about Commodus not being the real son of Marcus Aurelius, in order to absolve Marcus of blame for the way he turned out. Nevertheless, I think it probably does so by repeating gossip which had initially served to cast doubt on Commodus’ claim to the throne.

With all of this in mind, let’s dive into the hearsay reported by this source:

On a certain occasion, it was said, Faustina, the daughter of Pius and wife of Marcus, saw some gladiators pass by, and was inflamed for love of one of them; and afterwards, when suffering from a long illness, she confessed the passion to her husband. And when Marcus reported this to the Chaldeans, it was their advice that Faustina should bathe in his [the gladiator’s] blood and thus couch with her husband. When this was done, the passion was indeed allayed, but their son Commodus was born a gladiator, not really a prince; for afterwards as emperor he fought almost a thousand gladiatorial bouts before the eyes of the people, as shall be related in his life.

This rather salacious anecdote seems to be the part of the story which even the the author of the Historia Augusta, not known for his reliability, feels compelled to warn us is an embellishment rather than historical fact. Moreover, Marcus had fourteen children with Faustina. We’d need to have much better reason than gossip to countenance the assertion that Commodus was not his real son, especially given their obvious physical likeness to one another. The fact that Commodus liked to fight in the arena, of course, provides no evidence whatsoever that his father was actually a gladiator. If that’s the best reason his detractors could give for doubting his paternity, it’s clear they were scraping the barrel. Gossip thrives on spurious associations like this but we can’t take them seriously if we’re concerned with historical fact.

The Historia Augusta continues:

This story is considered plausible, as a matter of fact, for the reason that the son of so virtuous a prince had habits worse than any trainer of gladiators, any play-actor, any fighter in the arena, anything brought into existence from the offscourings of all dishonour and crime.

Again, the fact that Commodus reputedly had a vicious character may have convinced some ancient Romans that he could not really be the son of Marcus Aurelius but I doubt many modern readers would be convinced by this reasoning. It may have fueled gossip to the effect that he was the son of a gladiator but it clearly does not provide any evidence that this was the case. The Historia Augusta, despite having begun by casting doubt on this story, nevertheless, persists with it.

Many writers, however, state that Commodus was really begotten in adultery, since it is generally known that Faustina, while at Caieta, used to choose out lovers from among the sailors and gladiators. When Marcus [Aurelius] Antoninus was told about this, that he might divorce, if not kill her, he is reported to have said "If we send our wife away, we must also return her dowry". And what was her dowry? the Empire, which, after he had been adopted at the wish of Hadrian, he had inherited from his father-in-law Pius.

It’s been observed by several modern commentators that this quip attributed to Marcus seems implausible because the empire, in fact, was not bequeathed to him as a “dowry” for marrying Faustina, the daughter of Emperor Antoninus Pius. Marcus could have divorced Faustina without losing his claim to the throne. Indeed, Marcus was already earmarked by Emperor Hadrian to succeed Antoninus long before he was betrothed to Faustina and, in fact, he was originally betrothed to another girl, the daughter of Lucius Aelius Caesar. This “dowry” anecdote appears, therefore, to be a later embellishment of the gossip, as it is inconsistent with the details of Marcus’ life.

The historian concludes by adding:

But truly such is the power of the life, the holiness, the serenity, and the righteousness of a good emperor that not even the scorn felt for his kin can sully his own good name. For since Antoninus held ever to his moral code and was moved by no man's whispered machinations, men thought no less of him because his son was a gladiator, his wife infamous. — italics added

So the professed intention of reporting these “whispered machinations” about Commodus, in this case, appears to be to praise Marcus for his serenity and dignity, despite the gossip circulating about his wife and son.

In addition to these comments in the Historia Augusta, we find the following remark in history of Cassius Dio, a contemporary of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, who is considered more reliable being closer to the events.

[Marcus] himself, then, refrained from all offences and did nothing amiss whether voluntarily or involuntarily; but the offences of the others, particularly those of his wife, he tolerated, and neither inquired into them nor punished them.

Cassius Dio, nevertheless, makes no mention of her sleeping with gladiators, only that Faustina was rumored to have conspired with the usurper Avidius Cassius.

Elsewhere, Dio makes it clear that Marcus publicly heaped honors upon his wife.

And it was decreed by the senate that silver images of Marcus and Faustina should be set up in the temple of Venus and Rome, and that an altar should be erected [presumably at Marcus’ behest] whereon all the maidens married in the city and their bridegrooms should offer sacrifice; also that a golden statue of Faustina should be carried in a chair into the theatre, on every occasion when the emperor was to be a spectator, and placed in the special section from which she herself had been wont, when alive, to view the games, and that the most influential women should sit round about it. — italics added

The Historia Augusta attempts to explain this apparent contradiction by claiming that Marcus “was either ignorant or affected ignorance” of his wife’s infidelity.

He asked the senate to decree her divine honours and a temple, and likewise delivered a eulogy of her, although she had suffered grievously from the reputation of lewdness. Of this, however, Antoninus was either ignorant or affected ignorance. He established a new order of Faustinian girls in honour of his dead wife, expressed his pleasure at her deification by the senate, and because she had accompanied him on his summer campaign, called her "Mother of the Camp". And besides this, he made the village where Faustina died a colony, and there built a temple in her honour.

Dio likewise confirms that Faustina was honored with the title “Mother of the Camp”, because she accompanied Marcus to the legionary fortresses.

Whatever we may think of the claim above, that Marcus was ignorant of Faustina’s bad behavior, it is elsewhere contradicted by the author of the Historia Augusta who elsewhere explicitly states that Marcus was rumored to know of the allegations against his wife. We’re left with the Historia Augusta’s second claim, which portrays Marcus as a man who knew of his wife’s infidelities but chose to heap praise and honors upon her in public, and turn a blind eye to her bad behavior.

How does this compare with what Marcus himself says? The Meditations, his private notes to himself, are arguably our most reliable source. As most scholars agree these were never intended for publication. Marcus therefore has no motive to misrepresent his wife’s character as he’s addressing these words to himself alone. Indeed, Marcus felt able to criticize, or discount, other important figures in the Meditations.

However, contrary to the rumors, he specifically refers to his wife, Faustina, as loyal, affectionate, and honest (Med. 1.17). That stands in contrast to the depiction of her in this piece of hearsay, reported centuries later by the Historia Augusta. It’s completely consistent, however, with the way he commemorated her life in public, such as having the Senate deify her. In his private notes, and his public actions, therefore, there’s nothing but praise for Faustina. It’s only in the hearsay reported in Cassius Dio and the Historia Augusta that we find allegations against her, and only the Historia Augusta, written a couple of centuries after the events, and known for its flights of fancy, reports the lurid story that she slept with gladiators and was then required to bathe in the blood of a dead gladiator before making love to her husband.

Conclusion

The rumors about Faustina the Younger are likely exaggerated and perhaps completely unfounded. The specific claim about a gladiator being the father of Commodus is found in a single, unreliable source written centuries after the events. Even the author of that history prefaces this anecdote by warning that, though it seems plausible to him, it has been embellished by rumor.

Marcus Aurelius’ own writings and public actions suggest a very different picture of his relationship with his wife. When encountering such salacious claims, and conflicting evidence, it is therefore important to critically evaluate the sources and consider potential biases and motives. In any case, while the gossip about Marcus’ wife might be intriguing, it does not diminish the value of his philosophy.

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Treat life like a banquet...

Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand and take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth; and then some day you will be worthy of the banquets of the gods. But if you do not take these things even when they are set before you, but despise them, then you will not only share the banquet of the gods, but share also their rule. For it was by so doing that Diogenes and Heraclitus, and men like them, were deservedly divine and deservedly so called.

Commentary

Epictetus describes life as a metaphorical banquet of the gods. We should not grab at wealth and other external advantages greedily and try to hang on to them. Rather we should remember ourselves, and the bigger picture, taking only a reasonable portion, without becoming attached to things. We should not crave things we do not possess but be grateful for them when they come our way. We’d consider this polite behaviour, he says, at a banquet (symposium) where we’re mindful of our behaviour.

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Donald on The Daily Stoic

Over the years, I’ve had several conversations with Ryan Holiday, who is co-author (with Stephen Hanselman) of The Daily Stoic. Our discussions appeared on his podcast and website. I think I’ve met Ryan about three times in person, and we’ve spoken a few times via email. We’re both huge fans of Marcus Aurelius and, of course, Stoicism. I’ve included links to all (I think!) of the interviews I’ve done for The Daily Stoic.

This is the most recent video I’ve done with Ryan, where we met at his studio in Bastrop, Texas, to talk about Marcus Aurelius, psychotherapy, anxiety, and the way Stoicism has been exploited by some influencers.

Stoicism: Philosophy as a Way of Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is the video of an interview we did a year ago, where we talk about the life and thought of Marcus Aurelius.

This is the text of a written interview that I did for The Daily Stoic back, I think, in 2021.

Marcus Aurelius’ Psychological Toolkit: An Interview With Donald Robertson

The Daily Stoic Podcast: Ryan and Donald Robertson On the Brilliance and Insights of Marcus Aurelius

The Daily Stoic Podcast: Donald Robertson on Marcus Aurelius and Understanding Stoicism

Stoicism And The Art of Happiness by Donald Robertson: Book Summary, Key Lessons and Best Quotes

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