A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

by William B. Irvine

The person who, in contrast, is a stranger to discomfort, who has never been cold or hungry, might dread the possibility of someday being cold and hungry.

A third benefit of undertaking acts of voluntary discomfort is that it helps us appreciate what we already have. In particular, by purposely causing ourselves discomfort, we will better appreciate whatever comfort we experience.

(as Diogenes observed) greatly enhance our appreciation of any meal by waiting until we are hungry before we eat it and greatly enhance our appreciation of any beverage by waiting until we are thirsty before we drink it.

BESIDES PERIODICALLY ENGAGING in acts of voluntary discomfort, we should, say the Stoics, periodically forgo opportunities to experience pleasure. This is because pleasure has a dark side. Indeed, pursuing pleasure, Seneca warns, is like pursuing a wild beast: On being captured, it can turn on us and tear us to pieces. Or, changing the metaphor a bit, he tells us that intense pleasures, when captured by us, become our captors, meaning that the more pleasures a man captures, “the more masters will he have to serve.”

There are some pleasures, the Stoics would argue, from which we should always abstain. In particular, we should abstain from those pleasures that can capture us in a single encounter. This would include the pleasure to be derived

from certain drugs: Had crystal meth existed in the ancient world, the Stoics would doubtless have counseled against its use.

For the Stoics—and, indeed, for anyone attempting to practice a philosophy of life—self-control will be an important trait to acquire. After all, if we lack self-control, we are likely to be distracted by the various pleasures life has to offer, and in this distracted state we are unlikely to attain the goals of our philosophy of life.

We must learn, as Marcus puts it, to “resist the murmurs of the flesh.”

What Stoics discover, though, is that willpower is like muscle power: The more they exercise their muscles, the stronger they get, and the more they exercise their will, the stronger it gets. Indeed, by practicing Stoic self-denial techniques over a long period, Stoics can transform themselves into individuals remarkable for their courage and self-control.

They will, as a result, be thoroughly in control of themselves. This self-control makes it far more likely that they will attain the goals of their philosophy of life, and this in turn dramatically increases their chances of living a good life.

The Stoics will be the first to admit that

Just think, says Musonius, about all the time and energy people expend in illicit love affairs that they would not have undertaken if they had self-control.

TO HELP US ADVANCE our practice of Stoicism, Seneca advises that we periodically meditate on the events of daily living, how we responded to these events, and how, in accordance with Stoic principles, we should have responded to them.

Consequently, he spent the banquet angry at those who planned the seating and envious of those who had better seats than he did. His assessment of his behavior: “You lunatic, what difference does it make what part of the couch you put your weight on?”

Epictetus takes Seneca’s bedtime-meditation advice one step further: He suggests that as we go about our daily business, we should simultaneously play the roles of participant and spectator.3 We should, in other words, create within ourselves a Stoic observer who watches us and comments on our attempts to practice Stoicism.

We should continually ask whether we are being governed by our reason or by something else. And when we determine that we are not being governed by our reason, we should ask what it is that governs us. Is it the soul of a child? A tyrant? A dumb ox? A wild beast? We should likewise be careful observers of the actions of other people.4 We can, after all, learn from their mistakes and their successes.

Other signs of progress, says Epictetus, are the following: We will stop blaming, censuring, and praising others; we will stop boasting about ourselves and how much we know; and we will blame ourselves, not external circumstances, when our desires are thwarted. And because we have gained a degree of mastery over our desires, we will find that we have fewer of them than we did before; we will find, Epictetus says, that our “impulses toward everything are diminished.”

According to the Stoics, practicing Stoicism, besides affecting the thoughts and desires we have when awake, will affect our dream life. In particular, Zeno suggested that as we make progress in our practice, we will stop having dreams in which we take pleasure in disgraceful things.

Another sign of progress in our practice of Stoicism is that our philosophy will consist of actions rather than words. What matters most, says Epictetus, is not our ability to spout Stoic principles but our ability to live in accordance with them. Thus, at a banquet a Stoic novice might spend her time talking about what a philosophically enlightened individual should eat; a Stoic further along in her practice will simply eat that way.

The most important sign that we are making progress as Stoics, though, is a change in our emotional life. It isn’t, as those ignorant of the true nature of Stoicism commonly believe, that we will stop experiencing emotion. We will instead find ourselves experiencing fewer negative emotions. We will also find that we are spending less time than we used to wishing things could be different and more time enjoying things as they are. We will find, more generally, that we are experiencing a degree of tranquility that our life previously lacked.

They warn us to be careful in choosing our associates; other people, after all, have the power to shatter our tranquility—if we let them. They go on to offer advice on how to deal with insults, anger, grief, exile, old age, and even on the circumstances under which we should have sex.

Because the Stoics valued tranquility and because they appreciated the power other people have to disrupt our tranquility, we might expect them to have lived as hermits and to advise us to do the same, but the Stoics did no such thing. They thought that man is by nature a social animal and therefore that we have a duty to form and maintain relationships with other people, despite the trouble they might cause us.

To fulfill my social duty—to do my duty to my kind—I must feel a concern for all mankind. I must remember that we humans were created for one another, that we were born, says Marcus, to work together the way our hands or eyelids do.

vintner. He will not pause to boast about the service he has performed but will move on to perform his next service, the way the grape vine moves on to bear more grapes.

Instead, Marcus declares, we should confront them and work for the common welfare. Indeed, we should “show true love” to the people with whom destiny has surrounded us.7

Showing love to those around us

Some might find it hardest, for example, to stop dwelling on the past; others might find it hardest to overcome their lust for fame and fortune.

MODERN READERS will naturally wonder how Marcus was able to accomplish this feat, how he was able to overcome his disgust for his fellow humans and work on their behalf. Part of the reason we marvel at Marcus’s accomplishment is that we have a different notion of duty than he did. What motivates most of us to do our duty is the fear that we will be punished—perhaps by God, our government, or our employer—if we don’t. What motivated Marcus to do his duty, though, was not fear of punishment but the prospect of a reward.

Marcus therefore concludes that doing his social duty will give him the best chance at having a good life. This, for Marcus, is the reward for doing one’s duty: a good life.

For many readers, I realize, this line of reasoning will fall flat. They will insist that duty is the enemy of happiness and consequently that the best way to have a good life is to escape all forms of duty: Rather than spending our days doing things we have to do, we should spend them doing things we want to do. In chapter 20 I return to this question.

THE STOICS, it should by now be clear, are faced with a dilemma. If they associate with other people, they run the risk of having their tranquility disturbed by them; if they preserve their tranquility by shunning other people, they will fail to do their social duty to form and maintain relationships. The question for the Stoics, then, is this: How can they preserve their tranquility while interacting with other people?

Besides advising us to avoid people with vices, Seneca advises us to avoid people who are simply whiny, “who are melancholy and bewail everything, who find pleasure in every opportunity for complaint.”

We can also, Marcus suggests, lessen the negative impact other people have on our life by controlling our thoughts about them. He counsels us, for example, not to waste time speculating about what our neighbors are doing, saying, thinking, or scheming. Nor should we allow our mind to be filled with “sensual imaginings, jealousies, envies, suspicions, or any other sentiments” about them that we would blush to admit.

Marcus, as we have seen, advocates fatalism, as do the other Stoics. What Marcus seems to be advocating in the passages just cited is a special kind of fatalism, what might be called social fatalism: In our dealings with others, we should operate on the assumption that they are fated to behave in a certain way. It is therefore pointless to wish they could be less annoying.

But having said this, I should add that elsewhere, Marcus suggests not only that other people can be changed but that we should work to change them.10 Perhaps what Marcus is saying is that even though it is possible to change others, we can take some of the agony out of dealing with them by telling ourselves that they are fated to behave as they do.

According to Marcus, the biggest risk to us in our dealings with annoying people is that they will make us hate them, a hatred that will be injurious to us. Therefore, we need to work to make sure men do not succeed in destroying our charitable feelings toward them.

A wise man, Musonius says, will not have sex outside of marriage and within marriage will have it only for the purpose of begetting children; to have sex in other circumstances suggests a lack of self-control.13 Epictetus agrees that we should avoid having sex before marriage, but adds that if we succeed in doing this, we shouldn’t boast about our chastity and belittle those who aren’t likewise chaste.

If we analyze something into the elements that compose it, we will see the thing for what it really is and thereby value it appropriately. Fine wine, thus analyzed, turns out to be nothing more than fermented grape juice, and the purple robes that Romans valued so highly turn out to be nothing more than the wool of a sheep stained with gore from a shellfish. When Marcus applies this analytical technique to sex, he discovers that it is nothing more than “friction of the members and an ejaculatory discharge.”15 We would therefore be foolish to place a high value on sexual relations and more foolish still to disrupt our life in order to experience such relations.

“Sexual intercourse has never done a man good, and he is lucky if it has not harmed him.”

And having married, a wise man will bring children into the world. No religious procession, Musonius says, is as beautiful as a group of children guiding their parents through the city, leading them by the hand and taking care of them.19 Few people, Musonius would have us believe, are happier than the person who has both a loving spouse and devoted children.

WHEN INSULTED, people typically become angry. Because anger is a negative emotion that can upset our tranquility, the Stoics thought it worthwhile to develop strategies to prevent insults from angering us—strategies for removing, as it were, the sting of an insult. One of their sting-elimination strategies is to pause, when insulted, to consider whether what the insulter said is true. If it is, there is little reason to be upset. Suppose, for example, that someone mocks us for being bald when we in fact are bald: “Why is it an insult,” Seneca asks, “to be told what is self-evident?”

When we consider the sources of insults, says Seneca, we will often find that those who insult us can best be described as overgrown children.5 In the same way that a mother would be foolish to let the “insults” of her toddler upset her, we would be foolish to let the insults of these childish adults upset us.

ONE OTHER important sting-elimination strategy, say the Stoics, is to keep in mind, when insulted, that we ourselves are the source of any sting that accompanies the insult. “Remember,” says Epictetus, “that what is insulting is not the person who abuses you or hits you, but the judgment about them that they are insulting.” As a result, he says, “another person will not do you harm unless you wish it; you will be harmed at just that time at which you take yourself to be harmed.”7 From this it follows that if we can convince ourselves that a person has done us no harm by insulting us, his insult will carry no sting.

Do the things that happen to me help or harm me? It all depends, say the Stoics, on my values. They would go on to remind me that my values are things over which I have complete control. Therefore, if something external harms

me, it is my own fault: I should have adopted different values.

Of the kinds of humor we might use in response to an insult, self-deprecating humor can be particularly effective. Along these lines, Seneca describes a man, Vatinius, whose neck was covered with wens and whose feet were diseased, who joked about his own deformities so much that others had nothing to add.

THE PROBLEM WITH replying to insults with humor is that doing so requires both wit and presence of mind. Many of us lack these traits. When insulted, we stand there dumbfounded:

Refusing to respond to an insult is, paradoxically, one of the most effective responses possible. For one thing, as Seneca points out, our nonresponse can be quite disconcerting to the insulter, who will wonder whether or not we understood his insult.

The danger in responding to insults with humor or with no response at all is that some insulters are sufficiently slow-witted that they won’t realize that by refusing to respond to their insults with counterinsults, we are displaying disdain for what they think of us. Rather than being humiliated by our response, they might be encouraged by our jokes or silence, and they might start bombarding us with an endless stream of insults. This can be particularly awkward if the person doing the insulting was, in the ancient world, one’s slave or if he is, in the modern world, one’s employee, student, or child.

Besides being used to prevent grief, negative visualization can be used to extinguish it. Consider, for example, the advice Seneca gives to Marcia, a woman who, three years after the death of her son, was as grief-stricken as on the day she buried him. Rather than spending her days thinking bitterly about the happiness she has been deprived of by the death of her son, Marcia should, says Seneca, think about how much worse off she would be today if she had never been able to enjoy his company. In other words, rather than mourning the end of his life, she should be thankful that he lived at all.

Reason is our best weapon against grief, he maintains, because “unless reason puts an end to our tears, fortune will not do so.”