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January 13 - January 18, 2020
This is important to note: for a Stoic to exhibit the virtue of temperance, he must have at least some trace of desire to renounce, and to exhibit courage he must have at least these first sensations of fear to endure.
Stoic philosophy, which teaches us to accept our involuntary emotional reactions, our flashes of anxiety, as indifferent: neither good nor bad. What matters, in other words, isn’t what we feel but how we respond to those feelings.
For Stoics, this honesty and simplicity of language requires two main things: conciseness and objectivity.
The point at which our language starts evoking strong emotions is precisely when we start saying things that involve strong value judgments,
According to Stoic philosophy, when we assign intrinsic values like “good” or “bad” to external events, we’re behaving irrationally and even exhibiting a form of self-deception.
The Stoics were certainly interested in how our words affect others. However, their priority was to change the way we affect ourselves, our own thoughts and feelings, through our choice of language.
Cutting through misleading language and value judgments and stripping away any embellishments or emotive language, they tried to articulate the facts more calmly and soberly. Marcus likewise told himself to speak plainly rather than dressing up his thoughts in fancy language. Indeed, nothing is so conducive to greatness
rhetoric. Ironically, though, if he’d been more like Epictetus, he would have just stuck to the facts without getting
Marcus follows Epictetus’s guidance when he says, for instance, that he should tell himself someone has insulted him in a matter-of-fact way, but not add the value judgment that it has done him any
is the term we’ll use.29 However, it literally means an impression that gets a grip on reality and thereby prevents us from being swept along by our passions. It anchors our thoughts in reality. Zeno even
Krishna!
a Stoic might say someone “has been sent to prison,” but they should not allow themselves to go on about how awful it is and complain that Zeus has punished that person unjustly
As an aspiring Stoic, you should begin by practicing deliberately describing events more objectively and in less emotional terms.
They turn the noun “catastrophe” into a verb to help clients remember that viewing events in this way is actually an activity they’re engaged in.
They call it “decatastrophizing” when they help clients downgrade their perception of a situation from provoking anxiety to something more mundane and less frightening.
Decatastrophizing, on the other hand, has been described as going from “What if?” to “So what?”:
“Distancing” refers to the ability to view one’s own thoughts (or beliefs) as constructions of “reality” rather than as reality itself.
I feel about crashing my car if I were
“How will I think about this, looking back on events, ten or twenty years from now?” There are several distancing methods found in the ancient Stoic literature. For instance, you can help yourself gain cognitive distance just by speaking to (“apostrophizing”) your thoughts and feelings,
only our own acts of volition, our own intentions and judgments if you like, are directly under our control. Sure, I can open the door, but that’s always a consequence of my actions. Only my own voluntary actions themselves
When we judge external things to be good or bad, it’s as though we forget what’s under our control and try to overextend our sphere of responsibility.
not entirely “up to us” in this sense. As we’ve seen, of course, the Stoics still believe it’s reasonable to prefer health to disease, wealth to poverty, and so on. They argue, however, that we deceive ourselves when we invest too much value in external
As Aristotle said, fire burns just the same in Greece as in Persia, but men’s judgments about what’s good or bad vary from one place to another.
but Marcus makes no mention of any virtues possessed by Hadrian. Marcus clearly viewed Antoninus as the model of an ideal
The Stoics taught Marcus that anger is nothing but temporary madness and that its consequences are often irreparable, as in the case of
him with the psychological concepts and set of tools he needed to master his own feelings of aggression. Marcus clearly wanted to be more like the humble, peaceful Antoninus than the arrogant and
As Marcus said elsewhere, philosophy was his mother, the court merely his stepmother.
in their relationship was when his tutor presented him with a set of notes on the lectures of Epictetus from his own personal library. Marcus probably meant the Discourses recorded by Arrian, which
The emperors didn’t let Arrian and Rusticus write about courage while remaining safely at home, composing legal treatises while avoiding public life, or pondering
you cannot be a teacher without having first been a student, and that this is even truer for the art of
For example, Rusticus taught him not to be pretentious, encouraging him to dress like a normal citizen when possible. He also taught Marcus to be a careful and patient student of philosophy, to read attentively
He is overcome with a mixture of joy and anguish after reading some books by a philosopher named Aristo. Most scholars believe this must have been Aristo of Chios, a student of Zeno’s who had rebelled against his teachings and adopted a simpler
Marcus. Aristo rejected the study of logic and metaphysics, arguing that the primary concern of philosophers should be the study
like the philosophers he admired. It was around this time that Marcus began to distance himself from Sophists like Fronto and Herodes Atticus. What was the process of being
of diagnosing and curing unhealthy passions. This may give us some clues about the nature of the Stoic “therapy” Marcus went through with Rusticus. As a young man, Galen wondered
explained this well when he said that lovers are typically blind regarding the one they love. As we, in a sense, love ourselves
plainly to Alexander the Great. What’s required first is a more general openness to criticism: we should give everyone we meet permission to tell us what our faults
a very powerful therapeutic strategy. Being observed can help us develop greater self-awareness and correct our behavior, especially if we’re in the presence of someone we admire, such as a trusted mentor.
like this actually working out for you?” The very notion of someone else observing your thoughts and feelings can be enough to make you pause and consider them.
purpose may have been to assume responsibility for mentoring himself. Even today, writing exercises such as keeping a therapy journal are a popular form of self-help.
he most admires: Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Socrates, Diogenes the Cynic, Chrysippus,
Marcus even says that his father was like Socrates in his ability to abstain from things that the majority are too weak to do without and to enjoy things in moderation that most people cannot enjoy without going to excess.
same equanimity and clear conscience that Antoninus showed on his deathbed.
He is neither corrupted by pleasure nor injured by pain, and he remains untouched by insults.
Bhagavad Gita!
Stoics might ask themselves, “What would Socrates or Zeno say about this?” You can imagine your personal role model—or even a whole panel of Stoic Sages—giving you advice.
to yourself as you picture them in your imagination and try to formulate what the response would be.
You’ll probably find it more helpful to picture yourself improving in small increments rather than immediately mastering the whole situation. That’s known as the benefit of “coping imagery” over “mastery imagery.”
He likewise tells himself on awakening that he is rising to fulfill his potential for wisdom
People find it surprisingly helpful to set aside even a few minutes per day to reflect deeply upon their values.
Indeed, values clarification has become an integral part of modern evidence-based treatments for clinical depression.
perhaps damning Lucius with faint praise.2 Marcus speaks with artful vagueness here but perhaps meant that he became more determined to strengthen his own character after observing his brother’s vices spiraling out of control.
