Lessons in Stoicism: What Ancient Philosophers Teach Us about How to Live

by John Sellars

Now, our judgements are hugely important because, among other things, they determine how we act. As Epictetus put it, they control our desires and impulses. We might see something, make a judgement that it is something good, which creates a desire for it, which in turn prompts us to pursue it. Depending on what the thing is – a dream career, an expensive house – it might be a long and arduous pursuit, carried out at great cost to both ourselves and others. But the whole process begins with a simple act of judgement.

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was an avid reader of Epictetus, often tried to remind himself of this by pausing to think about the physical nature of seemingly desirable things before passing judgement on them: a fine meal is merely the dead body of a pig or a fish. Equally, the expensive gadget or executive car is just a lump of metal and plastic. Whatever value these things might seem to have is value that we attribute to them with our judgements, and not anything inherent in the things themselves.

We can strive to act as best as we can, but we can never completely control the outcome. If we tie our happiness to achieving the outcome, we run the risk of being frequently disappointed, but if we make our goal simply doing the best we can, then nothing can get in our way.

If we let our attention slip we can quickly lose whatever progress we may have made. So, we need to integrate periods of reflection into our daily lives.

If someone says something critical about you, stop to consider whether what they say is true or false. If it is true, then they have pointed out a fault that you can now address. As such, they have benefited you. If what they say is false, then they are in error and the only one being harmed is them. Either way, you suffer no harm from their critical remarks. But the one way in which their remark could cause you a real and serious harm is if you were to let it provoke you into a state of anger.

To experience adversity, then, is a mark of having a virtuous character. Conversely, excessive good fortune is in fact really bad for us. When are we ever tested if we never experience any difficulties? How will we ever develop the virtues of patience, courage or resilience if everything always goes well? There is no worse luck, Seneca says, than unending luxury and wealth, which will serve only to make us lazy, complacent, ungrateful and greedy for more. This is real misfortune! By contrast, whatever adversity life throws at us will always be an opportunity to learn something about ourselves and to improve our characters.

So Seneca’s God is the Stoics’ God, which they identified with the animating rational principle in Nature. Their God is not a person but rather a physical principle that accounts for the order and organization of the natural world (we’ll come back to this in the next chapter). When Seneca refers to the ‘will of God’, then, he is referring to this organizing principle,

We can also see here a difference in emphasis between Seneca and Epictetus. Whereas Seneca proposes that we think of seemingly bad things as in fact good (or at least beneficial), Epictetus counsels that we pay minimal attention to such events, instead keeping our focus squarely on our own judgements.

It’s not just that some things are out of our control; it’s that they couldn’t be any other way.

For the Stoics, thinking about fate is a central element in the remedy for adversity, because part of coming to terms with unpleasant events is accepting that they had to happen. Once we grasp that something was inevitable, we shall see that bemoaning it is pointless, will only generate further distress and simply displays a failure to grasp the way the world works.

Yet it’s absurd, Seneca suggests, that someone might be so protective of their money and possessions and yet so freely give away their far more valuable time.

‘living is the least important activity of the preoccupied man’.

the Stoic turn inwards, as we have already seen, is primarily focused on cultivating good, virtuous character traits and avoiding harmful, antisocial emotions, such as anger. The whole point of it is that afterwards we turn back outwards to play our parts as more effective members of the various communities of which we are necessarily a part.