Andrew Tate on Stoicism
The social media influencer Andrew Tate is in the news today because he’s been charged in Romania with “rape, human trafficking and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women.” He is also under investigation on separate charges including “money laundering and trafficking of minors”, as reported in the media. Whenever a figure that’s in the public eye mentions Stoicism, I receive emails and messages from people, sometimes including journalists, asking me to comment.
I’m not going to comment directly on the charges Tate faces, etc., but I would like to respond to the video clip below, in which he talks about Stoicism, as I’ve been asked about it several times in the past. It’s called “Stoicism Explained by Andrew Tate” and was published eight months ago (Oct 2022) by the YouTube channel Intellectual Dark Web.
The video opens with the interviewer asking the following question:
The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Stoicism. [Tate: Yup, yup.] You’ve referenced Stoicism multiple times. Not getting emotional. Thinking rational. [Tate: Yup.] This was a book that you’ve subscribed to for years, what was it about Stoicism and not getting caught up in emotions and even triggering emotions that resonates with you?
The first thing I’d say is that it’s unclear from this exchange, and the remainder of the video, whether Tate has actually read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. The interviewer implies that he has, and Tate says “Yup”, but he doesn’t explicitly say so himself.
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Stoicism versus stoicismThe second point I’d make is that the opening question explicitly frames the discussion as being about “Stoicism” (capital S), the Greek philosophy followed by Marcus Aurelius. However, it also immediately equates this with “not getting emotional”, which sounds more like “stoicism”, the modern concept of a “stiff upper-lip” coping style. These are definitely two different things and the most common misconception about Stoicism, which you find all over the Internet, is that it’s the same as “stoicism” the unemotional coping style.
It’s extremely important not to confuse these two things as a considerable body of evidence shows that “stoicism”, as measured by tools such as the Liverpool Stoicism Scale (LSS), is linked to increased risk of psychological problems. By contrast, Stoicism, as followed by Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, is the philosophical inspiration for modern cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), the leading evidence-based form of modern psychotherapy. Tim LeBon, the research director of the Modern Stoicism organization, incidentally, recently carried out a large research study that provided clear evidence that “stoicism” (measured with the Liverpool Stoicism Scale) was statistically uncorrelated with belief in “Stoicism” (measured with the Stoic Attitudes and Behaviors Scale or SABS) — they are two different things. We really don’t want to confuse something that is known to be bad for mental health with something that is known to be good for mental health.
How do we know that lowercase “stoicism” is unhealthy? Well, for a start there’s a well-known body of scientific evidence consisting of studies conducted independently by different teams of researchers, in different countries, using a variety of methods, with different populations. There are several mechanisms by which stoicism, or having a stiff upper-lip appears to cause problems. Some of them are almost common sense. For example, individuals who score high on the Liverpool Stoicism Scale tend not to seek emotional support from friends, family members, therapists or doctors. They see their independence as a sign of toughness but, of course, it makes them less resilient, in the long-run, than people who have good social support networks and make use of them wisely.
On a more internal level, people who view something as shameful or threatening automatically pay more attention to it. If there’s a predator on the horizon, your brain should override whatever else you’re doing and give all of your attention to that threat until it’s gone. That’s a basic survival mechanism. It can backfire dramatically, though, when we view inner experiences, like feelings of anxiety or depression, as the threat. Allocating more attention to them tends to magnify them in a number of ways. Moreover, several studies provide evidence that when we try to block thoughts and feelings from our minds they may recur more frequently — a phenomenon known as the “rebound effect” or “paradox of thought suppression”.
So “stoicism”, an attitude which tries to suppress or conceal unpleasant and embarrassing emotions, can be called “toxic” in this pretty obvious regard — it tends to make us more vulnerable to mental health problems, especially over the long-term. The irony about this, of course, is that people, often young men, are attracted to stoicism because they view it as a way of being “tough”. It appears strong or tough to them, at first, to suppress painful emotions but if that causes them to become less emotionally resilient in the long term it is, of course, actually a form of weakness. It’s psychological bait and switch — your mind tricks you into thinking this seems tough but it’s actually making you weaker and more emotionally vulnerable.
Andrew Tate’s ReplyNow, although Tate initially agrees with the interviewer saying he believed in “Stoicism” and “not getting emotional” (“Yup, yup”), he immediately seems to contradict this. He replies that “emotions are feedback” and that men are, in some ways, naturally more emotional than women. He gives the examples of heartbreak, anger and pure rage. Tate also says that “Stoicism” is not about “not feeling emotion” but rather about feeling emotion and asking why it’s happening and what the most intelligent next move would be. In a nutshell, he seems to now be arguing that strong emotions, particularly anger or rage, can be healthy, as long as they’re controlled and channelled in a positive direction — and he equates this with Stoicism, although it’s not clear if he’s still referring to Marcus Aurelius or not.
The conversation becomes a little unfocused as Tate begins talking about playing chess, being banned from social media, being the most hated man in the world, his Bugattis, etc. He goes on to say that he considers everything, good or bad, that befalls him, to be his own responsibility. He adds that sometimes he thinks his own rage is healthy whereas sometimes it’s pointless. These are his words:
I've also had times where I'm in a room by myself enraged [Tate laughing as he speaks] sitting there going “this is no good for anybody, I need to just calm the f*** down!”
“Emotions are feedback,” he continues, “but Stoicism is the ability to process them.”
That’s what you need to be learned as a man. You’re never going to be able to turn them off, you’re going to feel them, you’re going to have to learn to feel them, and turn them into a positive. It’s energy. It’s unlimited energy!
When he was heartbroken, he says, for instance, he hit the gym harder. Sometimes during this video Tate says things like “rage should be accepted and channeled in a positive direction” and other times he’s says things like “when you are angry you should tell yourself to calm down”, as we’ll see, these are potentially conflicting pieces of advice.
So all the bad things that happen to to you as a man, if you’re Stoic, you get to take unlimited energy, Heartbreak is unlimited energy. So is depression. So is rage. So is sadness. All these negative emotions…
He goes on to give the example that when he’s enraged “it’s like a dam” and you have to control the anger and “put the energy somewhere”, presumably instead of allowing it to be expressed freely.
My Analysis of Tate’s “Stoicism”I have to preface what I’m about to say by repeating that despite the video being titled Stoicism Explained by Andrew Tate, and the interviewer’s opening reference to Marcus Aurelius, it seems uncertain to me whether Tate has actually read the Meditations, or any other books on Stoicism. It’s impossible to know for certain but:
What he says sounds very unlike what Marcus Aurelius says concerning emotions in general and, as we’ll see, I believe Tate’s views conflict with Stoic philosophy
He never quotes any sayings or makes any explicit reference to any concepts or terminology, which might indicate that he’s read the Stoics
His comments about anger are particularly at odds with what Stoicism teaches
I get the impression that in response to a question about the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius, Tate basically just goes on autopilot and launches into his usual schtick about sports cars, chess, getting frustrated with women, and hitting the gym — he actually says nothing about Stoic philosophy or what it tells us about coping with violent emotions. (And I’m pretty sure Marcus Aurelius didn’t drive a Bugatti.)
Let’s examine the advice Tate does give about emotions, though. To my mind, as a cognitive-behavioral therapist, it appears like he is vacillating between two different, and potentially conflicting, emotional coping strategies: should we “calm the f*** down” when enraged or are we going to have to learn to accept the energy and “turn it into a positive.” Tate runs a self-improvement empire of sorts and has reputedly earned millions by giving advice like this. So I actually expected his answers to sound more consistent, as if he’d thought this over, or at least answered similar questions before.
My honest impression, though, is that Tate sounds like he’s put very little thought into this. Whether you agree with them or not, most self-help experts will tend to give a more coherent account of their favoured coping strategies. Tate gives the sort of response you would be more likely to hear from ordinary people (non experts) who have never been asked for their advice on emotional coping before. There are a couple of different strategies that come to his mind but he doesn’t seem very clear how they’re related. Indeed, suppressing emotions is quite different from redirecting them into activity. You can’t really do both at the same time. He might, for instance, have resolved that conflict by saying that there are certain situations where he thinks emotional suppression is more appropriate and others where redirection is his goal — and he could have explained the criteria for distinguishing one from the other.
None of this bears any resemblance to what Stoics such as Marcus Aurelius believed…
None of this bears any resemblance to what Stoics such as Marcus Aurelius believed, though. Tate views emotion in the naive way most people do by default, as a kind of energy, which builds up inside us — this is sometimes called the “hydraulic” model of emotion. In reality, we know that emotions are composed of multiple factors, though. In particular, the Stoics were known for their emphasis on the cognitive nature of emotion, which became the inspiration for modern cognitive therapy. This research-based model holds that our emotions, including rage, are shaped, more than most people realize, by certain corresponding thoughts and beliefs. This is expressed in the famous quote from Epictetus: “It’s not things that upset us but rather our opinions about them.” Marcus Aurelius says many similar things, paraphrasing this, including applying it specifically to anger.
Tate makes no mention of the role our beliefs play in shaping our emotions. For instance, according to the Stoics, anger is often associated with the belief that someone has acted unjustly and they should be severely punished. Modern cognitive therapy also uses very similar models of anger. We would normally help the client to examine whether these sort of beliefs are rational, healthy, and so on, or if there’s a more accurate, more balanced, or more constructive way of thinking about the situation. For Stoics, and cognitive therapists, therefore, “calming the f*** down” when angry, would reduce the sensation but do nothing to address our underlying angry beliefs. Neither would “hitting the gym” or redirecting anger in other ways.
These strategies can be understood as forms of what psychologists call “experiential avoidance”, trying to temporarily suppress or control an emotion, without actually changing the root cause. For instance, if you believe “women must respect me” and one day (inevitably) a woman rejects you, you will probably feel very angry — your cognition caused your emotion. Telling yourself to calm down might work temporarily but it’s not going to remove the demanding “must” cognition that made you vulnerable to getting enraged in the first place. Likewise, hitting the gym, might distract you from your anger, temporarily, but as long as you still rigidly believe that “women must respect me and if they reject me that is unbearable”, or some other such cognitive recipe for neurosis, you’re just going to become enraged again when they don’t act as you demand. You might as well be trying to hide a ticking time-bomb under a blanket.
Suppression, distraction, and other such avoidant forms of emotional coping are not usually recommended by evidence-based clinicians. In fact, we often begin therapy by evaluating clients’ existing dependance on such strategies and advising them to drop them in favor of alternative ways of coping. That said, I do believe that these strategies can have some benefits. In short, they can work temporarily. For example, although it’s still perhaps not the best way to cope, during a dental procedure, you might handle pain and anxiety by trying to “calm down”, or suppress unpleasant feelings using relaxation techniques. That can work in a pinch, but it will generally become problematic if those sorts of short-term (“experientially avoidant”) emotional coping strategies become your long-term solution. They are basically band-aids, which simply mask emotional problems rather than curing them.
Marcus Aurelius lists ten cognitive strategies for coping with anger, derived from Stoic philosophy…
Of course, you could, in some cases, use relaxation or distraction, to buy yourself time, so that you could work on your angry beliefs later. That’s definitely not what Tate describes doing though. Neither telling yourself to “calm the f*** down” nor hitting the gym harder, by itself, is going to do anything to change your underlying angry beliefs and neurotic demands. Moreover, suppression (calm down) or redirection and venting (hit the gym) are not how Stoicism advises us to handle our emotions. For instance, Marcus Aurelius conveniently lists ten cognitive strategies for coping with anger, derived from Stoic philosophy, in Meditations 11.18. They all involve changing our perspective on the situation, so as to modify the underlying beliefs causing our anger. That’s the real advice Stoics give us. (Along with the very detailed concepts and techniques in Seneca’s full book titled On Anger.) From Marcus’ list of ten Stoic strategies for dealing with anger, though, Tate mentions precisely zero.
So this is not a Stoic approach being described in the video. Nor is it very good psychological advice. Some of Tate’s anger management strategies (“calm the f** down”) are potentially more like lowercase stoicism, the unemotional coping style, than Stoicism, the Greek philosophy. His references to channeling the energy of his rage sound, at times, more like what we call “emotional venting”. This used to be a popular therapy for anger management until around the 1990s. People would go to anger-management workshops held in parking lots or gyms, e.g., where they would thump pillows with baseball bats to “get the anger out of their system”. Several studies showed that this wasn’t an effective therapy, though, and in some cases it has been found to make anger worse.
When you vent or redirect anger you’re not really purging the energy from your body. It’s more like you’re creating a habit through repetition. So, if you’re not careful, you run the risk of making the expression of your anger stronger and more habitual, which often means more automatic and less easy to control. For instance, if “hitting the gym harder” in an attempt to redirect or vent the energy of our emotions really did cure anger then athletes would all be very anger free, including Conor McGregor, John McEnroe, Mike Tyson, et al.
Part of the problem here is that most of us begin with an overly-simplistic view of emotion, as I mentioned above. In addition to recognizing that emotions have a cognitive aspect, it’s also very important to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary aspects of our emotions. This distinction was made by the Stoics over two thousand years ago, providing them with a much more nuanced understanding of emotion than most people have today, including self-improvement influencers like Tate. He seems to vacillate between talking about accepting our emotions and trying to control them. It would be better to say more clearly that we should accept the involuntary aspects of emotion, such as trembling with rage, and take more responsibility or control over the voluntary aspects, such as ruminating about thoughts of revenge, and so on.
ConclusionI’ve left this comment until the end because I think it should make more sense now. If it turns out that the allegations of violence against women are true, and Andrew Tate gets convicted, it’s possible to view poor emotional self-regulation, of his anger or rage, as a contributing factor in his behavior. Certainly, we would expect someone with healthy emotional-coping strategies to be less prone to aggression and violence, and the key to that in most cases is addressing the underlying attitudes which cause intense rage in the first place. It will probably be quite some time, though, before we find out the verdict in this case.
In the meantime, my advice would be that if you’re looking for ways to cope with strong emotions, especially the sort of intense rage described by Tate, you would be better to get advice from a qualified mental health professional, such as a cognitive-behavioral therapist, or at least to read some books providing evidence-based recommendations, rather than turning to influencers such as Tate. They are not basing their advice on scientific research or clinical best practices and, as a result, are often an unreliable source of information on the psychology of emotions, and the best way to cope with toubling feelings.
Likewise, if you’re interested in finding out about Stoicism and Marcus Aurelius, with all due respect, you’re definitely not going to get much of that from Tate’s video above. I would recommend Dr. John Sellar’s book Lessons in Stoicism: What Ancient Philosophers Teach Us About How to Live, as a short and easy to read but philosophically and historically authoritative introduction to the subject.
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As a bonus, here’s a video from The Stoic Teacher, critically evaluating another interview where Tate refers to himself as practising Stoicism.
