How Socratic is Modern Stoicism

This is a clip from a recent conversation I had for the Stoa app, in which I was asked whether Modern Stoics were Socratic enough.

I think, first of all, that most people who study Stoicism read modern self-help books and articles, the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, and maybe Seneca or Epictetus, but they often don’t read many modern academic books or delve deeper into the classics. In particular, the ancient Stoics appear to view Socrates as one of their most important influences. Epictetus repeatedly holds up Socrates to his student, in fact, as their supreme role model. Yet there’s not really much discussion today of what modern Stoics can learn from the Socratic dialogues of Plato and Xenophon.

(If you’re interested in learning more about Socrates, by the way, check out my , or my four-week intensive course .)

Reading about Socrates

In my opinion, if you’re interested in Stoicism, and you’ve been reading Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, you can probably also benefit a lot by reading Plato and Xenophon. (Of course, you can also expand your knowledge of Stoicism a lot through other ancient sources, such as Cicero, Plutarch, and other surviving Stoic texts, like the lectures of Musonius Rufus, or fragments, such as those found in Diogenes Laertius.) I hesitate to recommend specific texts because I know everyone’s needs are different. However, in my opinion, pretty much everyone should read Plato’s Apology. Why? Well, because it’s a masterpiece, and it also happens to be relatively short and easy to read.

The Apology is one of the most dramatic of Plato’s works because it deals with the trial of Socrates and his (notoriously unapologetic) defense speech. You could read it in a few hours. It’s one of the most important philosophical texts in the Western canon. (Personally, I think it’s the most important text in the Western canon.) In my experience, it’s also useful for those who are into Stoicism to read the first book of Plato’s Republic. The Republic, Plato’s magnum opus, is also one of his longest and most technical works, unfortunately. It’s ten books long, so roughly ten times the length of his shorter dialogues. However, scholars have traditionally felt that book one was written earlier than the rest. It feels like a self-contained dialogue, it’s more down-to-earth, more dramatic, and generally easier to read than much of what follows. So I tell people just to read that by itself, and maybe leave the rest of the Republic for later.

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I would also recommend reading the Memorabilia and Apology of Xenophon, our other main source for information on Socrates. The Stoics appear to be as influenced by Xenophon as they were by Plato and their understanding of Socrates, I suspect, was probably closer to that of Xenophon, as they rejected the metaphysical and political views of Plato. I would also advise reading book two of Diogenes Laertius’ Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, at least the chapters dealing with Socrates and his followers. This is much later source but it’s easy to read and provides an interesting overview of the life and thought of Socrates, and his influence on the tradition that followed. Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, had studied Plato’s dialogues, but also the Memorabilia of Xenophon, and the teachings of other philosophers of Socrates, known as the Megarian school. It’s likely he was also influenced by the writings of Antisthenes and other Socratics.

Thinking Like Socrates

In the clip, I talk about how the surviving Stoic texts focus on moral precepts rather than philosophical arguments. That’s probably a historical accident. There were many ancient Stoic teachers and authors, we know the names of roughly sixty or seventy, and they were often prolific writers. Chrysippus alone, the greatest intellect of the school, reputedly wrote over 700 texts, none of which survive today. At a rough estimate, we maybe have less than one percent of the original Stoic texts, surviving today.

With regard to the central teachings of the philosophy that’s not as much of a problem as it might seem, as they make it fairly clear what Stoics believed — the doctrine that virtue is the supreme good is, e.g., repeated many times. However, it does leave us with a skewed impression of what Stoics studied in general. For example, we know that ancient Stoics typically spent a lot of time reading and learning about logic and nature (ancient physics) as well as ethics.

I think one of the main things we miss out on today is an appreciation of the role of dialectic and the Socratic Method in ancient Stoicism. (Dialectic refers generally to the process of philosophical debate and the Socratic Method is one of its most important forms.) The Stoics were philosophers, first and foremost, and they stood squarely in the Socratic tradition. We can see, for example, that Epictetus sometimes employed the Socratic Method with visitors to his school, and he talks about the extensive studies in logic undertaken by his students. We even find little fragments of Socratic dialogue in the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, such as the following:

Socrates used to say: What do you want, souls of rational men or irrational? – Souls of rational men. – Of what rational men, healthy or wretched? – Healthy. – Why then do you not seek for them? – Because we have them. – Why then do you fight and quarrel? — Meditations, 11.39

Nobody wants to sacrifice their mental health or ability to reason clearly. Yet we squabble, and don’t take this as a warning sign that we’ve lost the very thing we claim to cherish the most. Although this fragment is nowhere else attested in the surviving literature, it certainly sounds like the type of contradiction that Socrates loved to point out. (We can’t be sure but it’s possible this is a quote from an early Socratic dialogue, perhaps quoted in one of the lost Discourses of Epictetus, which we know Marcus had read.)

How do we, modern students of Stoicism, learn to think like Socrates and actually do philosophy? I think that one route comes from reading the surviving Socratic dialogues, as long as we then take onboard the lessons they contain about critical thinking and the Socratic Method. I think the simplest way I can express this is to say that Socrates, I suspect throughout his adult life, was the sort of person who was adept at spotting contradictions. This is really the essence of his entire method, in my opinion. If you said to Socrates “I believe that pleasure is the goal of life”, or any such thing, he would respond as if to say “Yes but…”, and either point out some simple observation that didn’t sit well with your theory or something you’d already said that conflicted with it on closer inspection.

Socrates would often invite his acquaintances to define an important concept they were discussing, usually a virtue such as wisdom or justice. He’d then proceed to brainstorm, as we put it today, examples of the concept that appear to constitute exceptions and contradict the definition. For instance, in one of Xenophon’s dialogues, Socrates begins from the premise that lying is a form of injustice. However, he proceeds to bring up the example of an elected general lying to the enemy during warfare. Put crudely, it’s as though he wants his companions to respond by saying “Oh yeah, I guess you’ve got a point, I hadn’t thought of that!”

This process of spotting examples that his partners agrees contradict what they just said is continued, with the original definition being revised along the way. For instance, his young friend in this dialogue, Euthydemus, adopts the revised definition that justice consists in telling the truth to friends but lying to enemies. Socrates, once again, comes up with an exception that conflicts with this. Suppose, he says, your friend is out of his mind with depression, and suicidal, and asks you where he can find a knife to kill himself? Would it still be unjust to lie to a friend under these circumstances? And so the process continues. We’re obviously doing philosophy now or rather the philosophical process known as dialectic.

That’s what’s missing from modern self-help literature on Stoicism, though. Without it, ancient Stoicism potentially becomes even more dogmatic than it was intended to be as principles are accepted on the basis of intuition rather than reason. (Hopefully nobody really accepts the ideas of ancient Stoics today purely on the basis of their personal authority, though.) I think we lose some important psychological benefits of Stoicism if we abandon their use of dialectic, though. We can benefit from learning about modern formal and informal logic, particularly being able to spot logical fallacies. However, I think the best foundation for incorporating Stoic logic into our studies is simply to begin with the Socratic Method, and the practice of identifying logical contradictions in our own thinking and that of others.

(If you’re interested in learning more about Socrates, by the way, check out my , or my four-week intensive course .)

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